8 100 2176 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review This article is the earlier and longer version of what became the chapter, "English Poetry in Late Summer 1399," in Carlson's book, John Gower: Poetry and Propaganda in Fourteenth-Century England (2012). Its subject is the extension to poetry of the Lancastrian "effort to manage information" (375) concerning the 1399 invasion and deposition. Carlson suggests, albeit through "indirect" evidence, that the Lancastrian regime not only managed information through official records and chronicles, but engaged in "public self-fashioning" (410) through a group of poems with certain key shared characteristics. While he admits that "[t]here is no evidence of writs going out to the English poets in late summer 1399 . . . nor are there receipts for payment and the like" (409), as there is for chronicle writers, Carlson finds in the poetry relating to the summer of 1399 consistencies which point to official pressure or encouragement. He analyzes five poems: two in Latin, "O deus in celis, cuncta disponens fidelis," and Gower's "Cronica tripertita," and three in English, "On King Richard's Ministers," and "Richard the Redeless", and the poem written as marginalia in a manuscript of Walsingham's "Chronicle," "Up on a hylle is a greene." At the end of the article (410-18), Carlson supplies an edition and translation of "O deus in celis," with extensive textual and explanatory notes. The four elements which suggest for "conspiracy" or "collaboration" are 1) how the poems discuss their own chronology with an implication of "predeposition composition" (381); 2) the poems "generic distribution and peculiar style," specifically, prophetic, recondite allegory; 3) their concern over the politics of the ruling elite; 4) their inclusion in a larger effort "to represent as righteous and lawful the lawlessness and crime used to put the Lancastrian regime in place" (377). He also argues that "the poetry was too particularly useful to the Lancastrian regime then in process of installing itself to pass now for spontaneous" (410). Specifically in terms of Carlson's treatment of Gower, he suggests that Gower does invoke contemporaneous composition ("journalism," in Carlson's words) "even though the 'Cronica's putatively current reportage often supersedes itself" (382). The section on "Genres and Allegorical Style" situates Gower's allegory in the CrT in a context of political writing, and provides a different explication for its political prophecy. Gower is also central in the construction of an image of "Henricus 'pius'," specifically, a Henry whose revolution was not bloody (403). [MWI. Copyright. John Gower Society. eJGN 43.2] Author/Editor Author/Editor Carlson, David R. Published Carlson, David R. "English Poetry, July--October 1399, and Lancastrian Crime." Studies in the Age of Chaucer 29 (2007): 375-418. Gower Subject Cronica Tripertita Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource English Poetry, July--October 1399, and Lancastrian Crime. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2007 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review Boffey sets out to situate Thomas Berthelette's 1532 "Confessio Amantis" in the "landscape of authorial promotion" (221) of early English printing, concentrating especially on the paratextual materials of the printing of English poetry. She surveys the "options" available "to an early printer who wanted to foreground an author as a distinctive presence" (222)--title pages, prefatory material, woodcuts--observing, however, that in the "design of books containing the works of English poets . . . these practices were employed somewhat sporadically" (223), especially in cases of "substantial, well-known works" by Chaucer, Gower, and Lydgate, which printers felt, perhaps, "needed no introduction" because these venerable works "evidently had a reputation of their own in which authorship was somehow rolled up without needing to be explicit" (224). By the 1520s, however, "living" poets "were beginning to be treated rather differently" (224-25), with works by Skelton, for example, being "'branded'" (Boffey's emphasis) "with variations on a generic scholar woodcut," and the names of other writers featuring much more prominently. Analogous "interesting billing" (225) of authorship accompanies early sixteenth-century printings of works by Stephen Hawes, Alexander Barclay, and William Neville, Boffey tells us, as she exemplifies these practices and the "interest in authorship and agency discernible" (in Barclay and Robert Copland), an interest that "appears to have been part of a more general concern with textual matters, a concern evident in Berthelette's prefatory discussion" in his CA (227). Boffey comments on the little-discussed "Castell of Pleasure" by William Neville, printed by both Henry Pepwell (1518) and Wynken de Worde (1530), focusing on the frame to the dream vision in which there is a dialogue between "Thauctour" and "lymprimeur," who is identified in the frame as Robert Copwell--"intermittently a printer himself [who] also translated and edited a number of works for other printers." The dialogue pertains to "the topic of literary composition" (226), as Boffey puts it, and to the need for the author to defend his work as a gentle pastime. These and other detailed analyses enable Boffey to argue that attention to texts and authors in "large-scale testimonials to an interest in English verse" such as Berthelette's CA (and Thynne's "Workes" of Chaucer) is "not new" in 1532 but a development out of the interests of "networks" of "personnel involved in the printing of English works of poetry." Such agents worked together to compete with "continental printings" of vernacular and classical authors (229), and their interests in making English poets available "involved them in considering the changing forms of the language and the different states in which the texts had survived." Further, their "reading and researches brought [the] poets to the fore as authors, to be prominently named, celebrated, and sometimes pictured in printed forms" (220). [MA. Copyright. The John Gower Society. eJGN 39.2] Author/Editor Author/Editor Boffey, Julia. Published Boffey, Julia. "English Poets in Print: Advertising Authorship from Caxton to Berthelette." In Martha Driver, Derek Pearsall, and R. F. Yeager, eds. John Gower in Manuscripts and Early Printed BookFas. Publications of the John Gower Society, no. 14. Rochester, NY: Brewer, 2020. Pp. 219-30. Gower Subject Facsimiles, Editions, and Translations Confessio Amantis Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource English Poets in Print: Advertising Authorship from Caxton to Berthe. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2020 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review Cites "Tale of Florent" (CA, Book I, 1407-1861) as part of the tradition including Chaucer's "Wife of Bath's Tale," the "Wedding of Sir Gawain," and the "Marriage of Gawain." Author/Editor Author/Editor Ackerman, Robert W. Published Ackerman, Robert W. "English Rimed and Prose Romances." Roger S. Loomis, ed. Arthurian Literature in the Middle Ages: A Collaborative History (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1959), pp. 501, 504. Gower Subject Confessio Amantis Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource English Rimed and Prose Romances. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1959 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review "Moral" is not a bad description of Gower's poetry--and more polite than "dull." [RFY1981; rev. MA] Author/Editor Author/Editor Walker, Hugh. Published Walker, Hugh. English Satire and Satirists. London and Toronto: Dent, 1925, p. 17. Gower Subject Backgrounds and General Criticism Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource English Satire and Satirists. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1925 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review Gower as a critic of church corruption. [RFY1981] Author/Editor Author/Editor Trevelyan, G. M. Published Trevelyan, G. M. English Social History: A Survey of Sic Centuries, from Chaucer to Queen Victoria. London: Longmans, Green, 1942, pp. 2, 40, 49. Gower Subject Backgrounds and General Criticism Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource English Social History: A Survey of Six Centuries, from Chaucer to Queen Victoria. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1942 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review Attempts to define "complaint" poetry as a genre aimed primarily against the first two estates, the clergy and the aristocracy; draws on materials from Rolle, Langland, Wycliff, Chaucer, and Gower. [RFY1981] Author/Editor Author/Editor Kinney, Thomas L. Published Kinney, Thomas L. "English Verse of Complaint, 1250-1400." Ph.D. Dissertation. University of Michigan, 1959. Gower Subject Backgrounds and General Criticism Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource English Verse of Complaint, 1250-1400. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1959 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review Amid the "thematic continuity" across the Gowerian corpus (329), the CA is nonetheless "a new departure" (328). Nebuchadnezzar's dream of the Statue is retold in the VC unrelieved in all its apocalyptic horror, while in the CA, the same story is followed with the hopeful exemplum of Arion combined with "an allusion . . . to the peaceable kingdom in Isaiah 11:6" (329). The CA offers healing and redemption to the individual and society (330-36), with the reader "protreptic[ally]" sharing in the restorative process undergone by Amans (331, 336). Written for the new king Henry IV, "In Praise of Peace" continues the theme of healing, especially as a "salve" against the "pestilence" of war (337). [LBB. Copyright. The John Gower Society. eJGN 37.2.] Author/Editor Author/Editor Kobayashi, Yoshiko. Published Kobayashi, Yoshiko. "English Works." In Ana Sáez-Hidalgo, Brian Gastle, and R. F. Yeager, eds. The Routledge Research Companion to John Gower (Oxford and New York: Routledge, 2017), pp. 328-40. Gower Subject Confessio Amantis In Praise of Peace Vox Clamantis Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource English Works. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2017 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Author/Editor Author/Editor Morley, Henry. Published Morley, Henry, ed. English Writers: An Attempt Towards a History of English Literature. London: Cassell, 1889. Vol. IV: 150-240. Gower Subject Biography of Gower Cinkante Balades Facsimiles, Editions, and Translations Vox Clamantis Cronica Tripertita Confessio Amantis Style, Rhetoric, and Versification Language and Word Studies Review Morley's biographical sketch of Gower (pp. 150-60) surveys and offers corrections to previous accounts, with description of Gower's tomb and its inscriptions, followed by a description of the Trentham MS, including a history of the balade form and a printing of CB 2, with a translation (pp. 165-66). A second chapter follows concerning VC, with a description of the Revolt of 1381, narrative summaries of VC and CrT, and commentary on the "spirit" of VC as helping to justify Chaucer's label of "moral" Gower (200). A third chapter follows on CA, characterizing the poem as "earnest as it could be made by a writer hampered with the working of a fashionable piece of intellectual machinery for which, writing also when aged and in ill health, he did not really care" (201). An extensive summary/description of CA follows, book by book, interspersed with--and closed by--commentary on textual revisions, sources, analogues, and the "musical" qualities of Gower's English verse and diction. [RFY1981; rev. MA] Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource English Writers: An Attempt Towards a History of English Literature. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1889 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review The mixture of English and Latin on the MS pages of CA results, according to Yeager, in the creation of three different "voices" requiring our attention in the poem: that of the fiction, the story of Amans and Genius and the exempla, in English; that of the Latin verses that divide up the text; and that of the Latin prose marginalia. The second voice, Yeager argues, serves some of the same functions as the links in CT, but is peculiarly without a speaker: "no character, no fictive or even omniscient narrator, speaks these Latin lines; they appear as devices only, looking ahead for us to the unfolding of the larger narrative in English, providing a glimpse of what will be said and done" (p. 259). In their relation to the English text, "they insist upon reminding us of the textuality of the experience, of its unreality, of its craftedness" (p. 259); thus the engagement between "self" and "other" in reading CA becomes an engagement with the text itself. At the same time, the verses allow "entry in to the fictional world of the frame and exempla an authoritative, directing presence which is also authorial. By reminding us continually that the fiction is text, neither self-productive nor uncrafted, the Latin verses bring us back to the source of such crafting" (p. 260). The third voice, of the marginalia, provide a gloss to the poem, "referring to the events from a third-person point of view" (p. 261) and "directing the act of comprehension" (p. 262). Such glosses are presented as the work of an "unnamed 'other' reader" (p. 262), and there is no good precedent for Gower's decision to compose such glosses for his own text. The device recalls Derrida's discussion of the "doubled" text, and suggests Gower's consciousness of the page itself as "sign." As illustrations of the layout of a typical MS page, Yeager includes reproductions of three pages from Yale University MS Osborn fa. 1, a "third recension" copy of the early 15th century unknown to both Macaulay and Fisher. Though differing in orthography and layout, the text appears to be quite close to Fairfax. We should hope to learn more about it from the forthcoming Catalog of the Manuscripts of the Works of John Gower. [PN. Copyright The John Gower Society. JGN 7.2] Author/Editor Author/Editor Yeager, R.F Published Yeager, R.F. "English, Latin, and the Text as 'Other': the Page as Sign in the Work of John Gower." Text 3 (1987), pp. 251-67. Gower Subject Confessio Amantis Manuscripts and Textual Studies Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource English, Latin, and the Text as 'Other': the Page as Sign in the Work of John Gower Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1987 Type The nature or genre of the resource Article PeerReviewed Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review "This thesis explores issues regarding the oft-debated 'discovery of the individual', specifically in relation to the literature of the late medieval period. Critical debates concerning whether a medieval person was able to conceptualise a sense of individual self that was distinct from social norms, the accepted models or personae of being that were instantiated in culture and propagated as patterns around and within which a life should be led, have become confused because they have not properly addressed the related question of whether that awareness led to a specific ideology of 'individualism', in which, akin to modern Western notions of the self, to be a person uniquely distinct from all pre-existing forms of being was affirmed as desirable . . . . Chapter two [pp. 105-98] discusses John Gower's 'Confessio Amantis.' This chapter contests claims made by recent critics that Gower's poem shows that the human faculty of reason is enough to correct personal sin and error. Instead, it is shown that the 'Confessio' advocates a much more traditional, even theologically extreme, position concerning the route via which the fallen human condition might achieve its goal of spiritual salvation." In Smyth's reading of CA, human reason is limited and "divine revelation is necessary" (178), so that "Hope lies not in the capacity of man to save himself, but simply in the willingness to have faith that there is a guiding benevolence that encompasses the confusion and division, and that it can and will bring men, and perhaps society at large, to their salvation" (177). [MA] Author/Editor Author/Editor Smyth, Benjamin Michael. Published Smyth, Benjamin Michael. Errant Individualism in Late Medieval English Literature: The Poetics of Failure. Ph.D. Dissertation. The University of Liverpool, 2009. Dissertation Abstracts International A81.01(E). Abstract accessible via ProQuest Dissertations & Theses Global. Fully accessible via https://livrepository.liverpool.ac.uk/3174137/. Gower Subject Confessio Amantis Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Errant Individualism in Late Medieval English Literature: The Poetics of Failure. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2009 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review Though there is no essay devoted exclusively to Gower, he is named frequently in the pages of this collection, as one might expect from the friends and colleagues of J. A. Burrow, who himself has written so compellingly on our poet. Among the more important references: Ardis Butterfield ("French Culture and the Ricardian Court," pp. 82-120) offers a subtle and well-informed examination of the inter-penetration of French and English literary culture during the Ricardian period, emphasizing the mutuality of cultural influences that was a natural product of the close family ties between royal and aristocratic houses in contrast to a common tendency (among Anglophone writers) to emphasize the distinctness of the English from the French. In a brief consideration of the puy as an example of cultural imitation, Butterfield dismisses the suggestion of Gower's association as far-fetched since there is no evidence of continuity much beyond 1300; and in her discussion of the practice of quoting already existing refrains in new compositions she cites CB 25. In the final part of her essay she gives more direct attention to Gower as one whose works are "supremely poised between linguistic cultures" (p. 107). She compares CB 37 to a ballade of Guillaume Machaut, not to establish borrowing, though an argument for at least indirect influence would not be difficult to make, but to demonstrate how thoroughly at home Gower is in contemporary French poetic idiom, contrary to the judgment of those who have seen either a discontinuity with French courtly writing or a reaction against it in Gower's work. She also gives brief consideration to Traitie as a conclusion to CA, which it follows in 8 of the 10 MSS in which it is preserved. There is more than a single paradox to the relation, Butterfield points out, as Gower turns to more love poetry immediately after renouncing any further writing about love, and as he draws upon the authority of French to offer a very un-French defense of married love, creating an instability that is typical of the "endemic restlessness" of Gower's poetic career and his constant habit of setting up "oblique contrasts between different kinds of cultural perspectives" (p. 120). A.G. Rigg ("Anglo-Latin in the Ricardian Age," pp. 121-41) cites Gower at least once on almost every page in his survey of the role and status of Anglo-Latin during the last half of the fourteenth century, focusing on the Ricardian era in particular. "In this period," he writes, "we begin to see clearly the trends that would later lead to both the demise of Latin as a medium for creative writing and its protection as a unique manifestation of classical civilization" (p. 122). His essay is an engaging supplement both to his own History of Anglo-Latin Literature (1066-1422) and to Burrow's Ricardian Poetry, as he describes how Latin writers were like or unlike contemporary writers in English, using the features that Burrow defined as characteristic of the Ricardian age. Along the way, he makes many useful observations about how Gower was like or unlike other contemporary writers in Latin. To use a small example, Gower's use of the enclitic que for et, which stands out so prominently for those more accustomed to classical Latin, is, Riggs asserts, entirely typical of his age (p. 133); and on a larger matter, he notes that the most typical subject matter of late 14th-century Latin poetry is "historical" (as opposed to classical, Biblical, or devotional), the only exceptions being a few of Gower's own short poems. In the last part of his essay, he juxtaposes three different examples of such historical writing, Thomas Barry's "Battle of Otterburn" (a straightforward factual account in verse), Gower's CrT (in which the poet "has entirely manipulated history for his poetic and political agenda," p. 138), and the Visio in Book 1 of VC, "the most striking example of the use of contemporary history . . . for literary purposes" (pp. 138-39), presenting a vision that "more than any other dream-vision I know, mirrors the common experience of a bad dream" (p. 139). More briefly, Stephen Medcalf ("The World and Heart of Thomas Usk," pp. 222-253) cites Venus' instruction that Chaucer write his own "testament of love" (CA 8.2955*) as "the only probable evidence of a contemporary's having read" Usk's poem of that name; and Charlotte Morse ("From 'Ricardian Poetry' to Ricardian Studies," pp. 316-44) cites a number of recent studies of Gower (including works by Middleton, Yeager, Scanlon, and Spearing) in her survey of critical work on the Ricardian period that appeared following the publication of Burrow's ground-breaking study in 1971. [PN. Copyright The John Gower Society. JGN 20.1] Author/Editor Author/Editor Minnis, A. J., Charlotte Morse, and Thorlac Turville-Petre, eds. Published Minnis, A. J., Charlotte Morse, and Thorlac Turville-Petre, eds. "Essays on Ricardian Literature in Honour of J.A. Burrow." Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997 Gower Subject Language and Word Studies Cinkante Balades Traitié pour Essampler les Amants Marietz Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Essays on Ricardian Literature in Honour of J. A. Burrow. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Clarendon Press, Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1997 Type The nature or genre of the resource Book PeerReviewed Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review Santano Moreno's study of the Spanish translation of CA (a revised version of his doctoral thesis of 1989) appeared in the same year as Alvar's edition of the text; the author records the appearance of the edition in a note on page 45, inserted after his book had already gone to press. Manuel Alvar's long introduction to that edition and the present book thus constitute two independent, and in some respects complementary, studies of the same material. Santano Moreno's book is divided into seven chapters. The first treats the dating of the Portuguese and Spanish translations, and presents in greater detail the same evidence that appears in the author's essays (nearly identical, and both in English) in Manuscripta 35 (1991):23-34 (see JGN 10, no. 2) and in Selim 1 (1991):106-22 (see JGN 13, no. 1). His conclusions, that the Portuguese translation was completed between 1433 and 1438, that the Spanish translation was done before 1454, and that the surviving MS must be dated after 1487 and perhaps as late as the early years of the 16th century, are argued persuasively, they constitute a significant revision of previously held views, and they are the final word until some better evidence is found. The remaining six chapters are devoted to the differences between the Spanish and English texts, arranged by type: two chapters on "Omissions that do not substantially modify the meaning," and one each on "Omissions that modify the meaning, and censorship of an ethical and religious nature," "Additions and transformations," "Additions that modify the meaning for ethical or religious reasons," and "Idiomatic and cultural correspondences" between the two texts. The division between changes that affect the sense and those that don't appears somewhat arbitrary: it is a bit surpris¬ing, for instance, to find the omission of the Latin epigrams included in the first chapter, among differences that "do not substantially modify the meaning." (In this section, the author might also have considered the state of the English MS from which the original translator worked, moreover, as Alvar does in his treatment of the epigrams, and as Santano himself does is his discussion of the accidental omission of 4.1813-2233.) The chapter headings are thus somewhat misleading; what we really have here is a catalog of differences between the Spanish and English texts that affect the sense in different ways. As such, Santano Moreno's study provides the complement to Alvar's: where Alvar studies equivalencies, Santano emphasizes differences; where Alvar emphasizes translation, Santano treats the Spanish version as a re-creation of the English text, citing other instances in which medieval authors altered the stories that they found in their "sources." The analogy between Gower's retelling of Ovid, say, and Juan de Cuenca's version of CA is perhaps not exact, but the author finds enough differences to make his comparison interesting. The very act of translating Gower's verse into prose results in many of the omissions that Santano lists, for the Spanish text leaves out most of the expressions we ordinarily dismiss as "fillers" for the sake of meter or rhyme. Another consequence, however, is that the Spanish version is much less colloquial than Gower's; most of the examples that Santano cites in this respect come from the dialogue portions of the poem, and reflect some of the differences from the more formal style of most of the tales. The Spanish version is also less ornamental rhetorically, and here we might consider whether style is a part of meaning: one gets little sense from the Spanish of Gower's more stirring passages of description, or of Amans' more assertive and emotional defenses of his love. The translator was also evidently less interested in the psychology of the lover than in questions of morality. He is rather more modest than Gower in his references to sexual desire, and to complement his many small omissions, he has made a number of additions as well, sometimes only of a single word, but emphasizing such things as God's grace, God's will, God's intervention in human affairs, the sacraments, conversion, the doctrines of the church, the need for penitence, and the destiny that awaits the unrepentant sinner, and generally heightening the praise of virtue and the condemnation of vice. Santano Moreno also notes, as evidence of the translators' own learning, some passages in which they have corrected Gower's citations from the Bible and restored his story to a form more like the source; and in his last chapter, on "idiomatic and cultural correspondences," he treats some of the differences in behavior and imagery that reflect that translators' adaptation for a different nation of readers. His general conclusion, however, is that despite all the differences between the texts, in emphasizing the moral instruction in the poem the translators have remained consistent with Gower's own purposes. Santano Moreno's own characterization of Gower as a sober moralist seems to lie behind some of his judgments of which changes alter the sense and which do not. Some will feel, however, that he has been too conservative, and that in out-Gowering Gower, the translators have removed much of what makes CA more interesting than a mere work of moral instruction could possibly be. Both this book and Alvar's edition will be nearly impossible to obtain in the United States. Readers who wish a copy of Santano Moreno's may write to the Servicio de Publicaciones de la Universidad de Extremadura; C/ Pizarro, 8; 10071 Cáceres; Spain. [PN. Copyright The John Gower Society. JGN 14.1] Author/Editor Author/Editor Santano Moreno, Bernardo Published Santano Moreno, Bernardo. "Estudio sobre Confessio Amantis de John Gower y su versión Castellana, Confisyon del Amante de Juan de Cuenca." Cáceres: Universidad de Extremadura, 1990 Gower Subject Facsimiles, Editions, and Translations Confessio Amantis Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Estudio sobre Confessio Amantis de John Gower y su versión Castellana, Confisyon del Amante de Juan de Cuenca. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Universidad de Extremadura, Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1990 Type The nature or genre of the resource Book PeerReviewed Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review "Ovid, in his 'Ars amatoria,' adopts the didactic framework in order to elevate the tradition of Latin love elegy and make a name for himself as a poet. In contrast, three of his most famous medieval successors--Andreas Capellanus, Jean de Meun, and John Gower--invert the balance, exploiting the subject of love to instruct their readers in other topics, such as religion, philosophy, and morality. This shift in balance is related to the practice of 'ethical reading,' which emerged in medieval 'grammatica' as a way of approaching classical authors by emphasizing the ethical (and thus educational) potential of their texts. Previous scholarship has established the ethical focus of medieval grammar education and the ways in which that ethical focus influenced medieval readings of classical texts, but this scholarship has rarely continued on to discuss the influence of grammar education on medieval authors. Andreas, Jean, and Gower first encountered imaginative literature in the medieval curriculum, where the texts of classical authors were used to teach students the Latin language. In the grammar classroom, they would have been taught interpretive methods that trained them to identify the utility of what they were reading, whether that utility was conceived of in philological, ethical, philosophical, or even theological terms. Conditioned to read imaginative literature for these didactic purposes, Andreas, Jean, and Gower discovered, in Ovid's 'Ars amatoria,' a text that used love as a platform for didacticism, and a model around which to build their own literary inventions. The literary works that they created--Andreas's 'De amore' (late 12th c.), Jean's continuation of 'Roman de la Rose' (late 13th c.), and Gower's 'Confessio Amantis' (late 14th c.)--are dense, challenging, and multilayered texts that illustrate the process of learning through reading and dialogue, and use the literary discourse of love to teach their students the art of reading." [JGN 33.2.] Author/Editor Author/Editor Farber, Annika Published Farber, Annika. "Ethical Reading and the Medieval 'Artes amandi': The Rise of the Didactic in Andreas Capellanus, Jean de Meun, and John Gower." PhD thesis, Pennsylvania State University, 2011. Gower Subject Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations Confessio Amantis Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Ethical Reading and the Medieval 'Artes amandi': The Rise of the Didactic in Andreas Capellanus, Jean de Meun, and John Gower. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2011 Type The nature or genre of the resource Thesis NonPeerReviewed Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review Mitchell has an ambitious triple agenda in this engaging study: redeeming medieval morality generally from the charge that it is merely prescriptive and authoritarian (an accusation most often voiced by those who also find it inherently suspect); to offer a poetic of exemplary literature that transcends the assumption that narrative is inevitably hostile to moral principle; and to demonstrate the centrality, and also the consciousness of the potential complexity, both of exemplary rhetoric and of moral practice in Gower and Chaucer. Mitchell's central propositions are first that narrative is necessary to give meaning to moral principle, and that in an exemplum there is therefore a "reciprocal movement between narrativity and normativity" (17); and second, that reception is integral to the exemplary process: that exempla by their very nature are addressed to the reader's future action. For that reason, they must be applied to particular circumstances, and they are thus open to a diversity of responses. "The end of exemplary rhetoric is not to find a determinate moralization or thematic closure," Mitchell declares, "but to discover how to live a moral life" (13-14). He lays out the background to his analysis in his first two chapters. In chapter 1, "Reading for the Moral: Controversies and Trajectories," he responds to what he sees as the modern misreading of medieval exemplary rhetoric, and he cites both medieval and modern theorists in defense of his pragmatic emphasis on reader choice and on moral practice. In chapter 2, "Rhetorical Reason: Cases, Conscience, and Circumstances," he traces the ancestry of the case-based rhetoric of the exempla to its roots in Aristotelian thought, and he cites other medieval examples of a similar flexibility in the application of moral principle, for instance the emphasis laid in the confessional manuals on examining closely the circumstances both of the sinner and of the sin. The remainder of his book explores the adoption of the rhetoric of exemplarity in works of poetry, in two chapters on Gower and three on Chaucer. The first of the chapters on Gower, "Gower for Example: Confessio Amantis and the Measure of the Case," has already appeared, in somewhat revised form and with a slightly different title, as an article in Exemplaria (see JGN 23, no. 2). In it, Mitchell argues that the poem is "comprehensive" but not "coherent": that in its vastness, it offers a wide array of lessons on moral practices in love that are sometimes confusing and even contradictory, and the burden is thus placed upon every reader, as it is upon Amans, to discover the application of each lesson that is most relevant to his own behavior. Genius participates in that effort by the way in which he adapts his lessons to the practices of lovers; Amans participates, for instance, in the way in which he rejects the lessons that seem to have no application whatever to his case. "The exemplary array constitutes something like a horizon of possible outcomes, a taxonomy of cases, a repertoire useful for orienting the moral subject without predetermining final ethical positions in practice" (59). In the end, therefore, "Amans himself must reach his own judgement, find the measure, make meaning – by moving in and among contrastive exempla representing cases in extremis – if he is to figure out what it is good for him to do with his love" (58). Similarly (to borrow a formulation from the next chapter), whatever good the poem itself achieves "will occur outside the poem in the conscience of the reader" (65): "Gower's is an art that provokes the audience to proceed without the promise of coherence. To adapt what has become a favorite medieval motto: Gower provokes us to doubt, so that by doubting we come to questioning, whereby we might arrive at answers. The moral mean-ing rests as much on what readers do as on what the text means" (66). In that next chapter, "All that is Written for our Doctrine: Proof, Remembrance, Conscience," Mitchell first situates his argument with reference to recent discussions of Gower's poetical "authority," which he notes need to be "reconceptualized to include the potentialities of reader response" (63). He then goes on to discuss some of the problems inherent in the key terms of Gower's "ethical poetic" (66). Both "remembrance" and "evidence" occur repeatedly in the poem, and as the exempla themselves demonstrate, each can be either incomplete or misleading. The solution for Gower, Mitchell argues, resides in the notion of "conscience," which in the poet's "ethical empiricism" (78) still bears the burden of moral judgment. When he comes to Chaucer, in his last three chapters, Mitchell is obviously less concerned with dispelling the poet's reputation for moral sententiousness than he is in Gower's case. He argues instead the very importance of the ethical dimension of Chaucer's work and of the poet's engagement with, rather than dismissal of, the impact of his tales upon the ethical choices of his readers. After surveying the pervasiveness of the exemplary mode in CT, including but certainly not limited to such instances as 2NT and Mel, he focuses on what he calls the "problematic cases" (84) – the tales of the Wife of Bath, Friar, Summoner, Pardoner, and Clerk – in order to examine how Chaucer both explores and exemplifies exemplary practice. The Wife of Bath confronts the antifeminist exempla of her husband's book of "wicked wives" with an exemplary rhetoric of her own that is grounded in a literalist hermeneutic, drawn from her own experience. "By trading on the inherent flexibility of the rhetoric[,] the Wife of Bath effectively reminds us that exempla are amenable to diverse applications. An applied ethics, exemplary morality exists to be reinvented in practice" (93). The Friar, Summoner, and Pardoner are each shown abusing exemplary morality for personal and private ends, and each is also guilty of the sins that he preaches against (and in the first two cases, attributes to another). As studies in the abuse of exemplary rhetoric, each reaffirms rather than undermines the value of exemplary instruction since we perceive their faults ironically by means of their own exempla. "Chaucer creates figures who become . . . their own best worst examples" (111). "At last, these pilgrims are 'bad' only because their exempla are 'good'" (110). In that respect, Mitchell suggests, the Pardoner's performance – in which he himself serves as exemplum – may be more effective than the Parson's. ClT, finally, problematizes exemplary instruction by offering too many, often conflicting, moral lessons. The necessity of choosing a single moral for the tale, Mitchell argues, is itself a moral decision. The tale itself is thus a "parable of exemplarity" (129): in forcing us to choose one reading to the exclusion of others, "the tale draws its audience to a pointed recognition of what is at stake, in the face of the dilemma, every time moral application is sought in the futurity of decision" (ibid.). The tale's "undecidability" is thus "a call to responsibility" (130). Mitchell is both subtle and refreshingly iconoclastic, and even if one does not accept every detail of his readings, he offers a persuasive demonstration of a rich range of possibilities in what might all too easily be seen as a limited and transparent form. Much of what he says has implications reaching far beyond Chaucer and Gower, and his examination of CA opens up some interesting new ways of seeing the work. [PN Copyright The John Gower Society: JGN 24.1] Author/Editor Author/Editor Mitchell, J. Allan Published Mitchell, J. Allan. "Ethics and Exemplary Narrative in Chaucer and Gower." Chaucer Studies Series (33). Cambridge: Boydell & Brewer, Limited, 2004 ISBN 1843840197 Gower Subject Backgrounds and General Criticism Confessio Amantis Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Ethics and Exemplary Narrative in Chaucer and Gower. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Boydell & Brewer, Limited, Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2004 Type The nature or genre of the resource Book PeerReviewed Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review "Many critics have seen 'Confessio Amantis' as a work of reformist rhetoric that, drawing deeply on medieval Aristotelian conflations of ethics and politics, urges readers toward personal moral reform as the crucial means by which to heal the body politic. In such a view, the moral and public interests on full display in 'Mirour de l'Omme,' 'Vox Clamantis,' and elsewhere remain central to Gower's purpose in 'Confessio.' However, while 'Mirour' and 'Vox' also foreground religious concerns, 'Confessio' is often seen as "secular" in a modern sense. I argue in this dissertation that 'Confessio' indeed bears strong affinities to Gower's other religious-ethical-political works, and that the main differences that set it apart from them must be understood in connection with Gower's decision to write this work 'in oure Englissh.' Notwithstanding its debt to aristocratic culture, 'Confessio' imagines a broader and more popular audience than do 'Vox' and 'Mirour.' Gower's novel language choice has major implications especially for Confessio's uncharacteristically delicate handling of religion. Chapter 1 examines Confessio's Ovidian debt and suggests that Confessio's many invocations of 'Metamorphoses,' given that poem's fourteenth-century reception, align 'Confessio' with Ovidian universal satire in a way that suggests totalizing religious-ethical-political synthesis. However, 'Confessio' departs from the mainstream of fourteenth-century commentated Ovids by stripping 'Metamorphoses' of its clergial patina and, crucially, adopting a markedly lay stance. Investigating Gower's attitude to English vernacularity, chapter 2 notes Confessio's association of translation with decay and demonstrates that scientific and theological passages in Gower's English works adopt a lower register than analogous passages in his Latin works. Chapter 3 investigates the probable causes of these downward modulations, comparing Gower's sense of linguistic decorum to those discernible in contemporary English vernacular theology. Chapters 4 and 5--on metamorphosis and art, respectively--argue that Gower finds in Ovidian writing rich resources particularly adaptable to the most delicate of Gower's rhetorical tasks in Confessio: to address, as layman, a lay audience on matters that are unavoidably, and indeed largely, religious. The dissertation concludes by suggesting that Gower's voice of lay religious critique plays an important role in the histories of laicization and secularization." Author/Editor Author/Editor McCabe, T. Matthew N Published McCabe, T. Matthew N. "Ethics, Rhetorical Accommodation, and Vernacularity in Gower's Confessio Amantis." PhD thesis, University of Toronto, 2010. Gower Subject Language and Word Studies Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations Vox Clamantis Confessio Amantis Mirour de l'Omme (Speculum Meditantis) Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Ethics, Rhetorical Accommodation, and Vernacularity in Gower's Confessio Amantis Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2010 Type The nature or genre of the resource Thesis NonPeerReviewed Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review Shaw proposes that "coise" (CA 1.1734) = "thing;" and that it is a feminine form of OF coi, quoi, "what," which is used as a substantive to mean "thing" in MO 1781. She also cites Gower's use of "what" to mean "thing" or "person" in CA 1.1676; and concludes that "the unusual diction of this passage argues forcefully for a French source for the 'Tale of Florent'." Shaw provides no other examples, however, of the creation of a feminine noun by the addition of non-etymological -se to a masculine noun, much less to a pronoun (the very lack of gender of which is implied in her own translation), and the pages she cites from Einhorn's Old French: A Concise Handbook do not offer any help. Previewed in JGN 3, no. 2. [PN. Copyright The John Gower Society: JGN 6.1] Author/Editor Author/Editor Shaw, Judith Davis Published Shaw, Judith Davis. "Etymology of the Middle English 'Coise'." ELN 22.4 (1985), pp. 11-13. Gower Subject Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations Language and Word Studies Confessio Amantis Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Etymology of the Middle English 'Coise' Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1985-06. Type The nature or genre of the resource Article PeerReviewed Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review Derek Pearsall coined the image of the CA as a "dreadnought" poem, a massive battleship girded with the iron cladding of Latin marginalia. Stadolnik points out that despite the Confessio's fearsome unity in the London manuscripts that define the poem's identity, a number of excerpted versions survive from the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries whose purposes may not be intellectual power projection in so overwhelming a form. Kate Harris and Tony Edwards have both trod this ground, noting that such excerpts were probably much more frequent than the survivors indicate (Harris) and that the removal of the tales from their massive penitential framework can have subversive effects (Edwards). Takamiya MS 32 is a carefully-designed and decorated compilation opening with five tales from the CA ("Three Questions," "Procne, Philomela, and Tereus," "Nectabanabus," "Perseus and Demetrius," and "Adrian and Bardus"). These tales are followed by the unique witness for the allegorical dialogue "Speculum Misericordie" and a complete text of the "Canterbury Tales" that has earned this manuscript its more familiar appellation as "the Delamere Chaucer." Closing the volume is a further CA excerpt that combines "Nebuchadnezzar's Dream" (including its Latin headverse) with "Nebuchadnezzar's Punishments." One consequence of this excerpting is the complete removal of moralizing structures imposed in the CA by the Latin marginalia and the commentary of Genius himself in the main text. The scribe in Takamiya 32 goes further by rewriting the final couplet of "Tereus" to replace its moral sting with a bland prayer that things go well for everybody, a move other excerpters such as the Findern manuscript (Cambridge University Library MS Ff.1.6) do not make. An even more elaborate disarming of moral authority occurs in a rewritten prologue and (to a lesser extent) expanded ending for "Demetrius and Perseus," reframing the tale's worth in the safe terms of an antiquarian response to romance. The scribe of Takamiya 32 also rewrites links in the "Canterbury Tales," but to a different end: highlighting the tales to accentuate the pilgrimage frame. Although this complete text of Chaucer's poem has always outweighed the presence of the CA extracts, nonetheless these Gower extracts literally (and, by all indications from its production, intentionally) frame the complete texts here. [JF. Copyright. The John Gower Society. eJGN 35.1.] Author/Editor Author/Editor Stadolnik, Joseph Published Stadolnik, Joseph. "Excerpting Gower: Exemplary Reading in New Haven, Takamiya MS 32." South Atlantic Review 79.3-4 (2015), pp. 36-51. ISSN 0277-335X Gower Subject Manuscripts and Textual Studies Confessio Amantis Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Excerpting Gower: Exemplary Reading in New Haven, Takamiya MS 32 Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2015 Type The nature or genre of the resource Article PeerReviewed Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review Lipton argues that Gower's discussion of marriage in the 'Traitié' is shaped as much by legal doctrine (and his own legal training) as by the sermons and confessional manuals that are more frequently cited and that lie closer to the heart of CA. She notes the prevalence of legal vocabulary in the 'Traitié' and traces the way in which the opening ballades incorporate marriage within an account of the descent of law from divine to natural to positive and from old to new. Both law and marriage, for both Gower and for the writers of the legal treatises that she cites, are regulatory in nature, and they originate in paradise in response to man's fallen condition. The main body of the 'Traitié' is shaped by the "case-based ethical thinking" of Aristotle and Aquinas that was central to medieval legal theory as well, and in contrast to their analogues in CA, the exempla that Gower presents, with their emphasis on punishment, "repeatedly represent transgressions of marriage as occasions for exercising justice rather than teaching moral truth" (495). The address of the poem "a tout le monde en general," finally, reflects an evolving view of the social foundations of law. "The poem makes marriage instead of kingship emblematic of legal principles. Rather than presenting law as a divinely given monarchical prerogative, the balades feature principles of common good and contractual integrity, which are essential to the law as a foundation of wide-ranging social order. The poem thus reflects both a contemporary legal view of marital crime as social and the increasingly broad public participation in English criminal justice" (497). [PN. Copyright. The John Gower Society. JGN 33.2.] Author/Editor Author/Editor Lipton, Emma Published Lipton, Emma. "Exemplary Cases: Marriage as Legal Principle in Gower's 'Traitié pour les amantz marietz'." Chaucer Review 48 (2014), pp. 480-501. ISSN 0009-2002 Gower Subject Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations Confessio Amantis Traitié pour Essampler les Amants Marietz Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Exemplary Cases: Marriage as Legal Principle in Gower's 'Traitié pour les amantz marietz' Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Penn State University Press, Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2014 Type The nature or genre of the resource Article PeerReviewed Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review Bunt begins with a general overview of the frame story, the structure, and the sources of CA as a prelude to his discussion of Gower's use of exempla. Using some of the most familiar tales from the poem, he points to the problems created by Genius' uncertain moral authority, especially in tales concerned with love (e.g. "Dido and Aeneas" and "Ulysses and Penelope"), and by the frequent conflict between the moral lesson and the particulars of the narrative in the longer and better developed tales (e.g. "Ceix and Alcyone," "Apollonius of Tyre," and "Canace and Machaire"). These discrepancies, he concludes, "seem to be inherent in [Gower's] method of exemplification," by which the poet concentrates upon a single lesson for each tale, even when this is not necessarily its dominant theme. A different sort of discrepancy arises in the many tales concerned with Alexander, who is referred to more often than any other hero in CA, and who provides the pretext for the long excursus in Book 7. One finds the same habit of concentrating upon a single lesson at the expense of the other moral issues each story might raise. In this case, moreover, Gower makes no effort to provide a consistent view of Alexander's character, and was clearly less interested in Alexander as a historical figure than as a source of a large number of well known, though sometimes conflicting, exemplary tales. [PN. Copyright The John Gower Society. JGN 12.1] Author/Editor Author/Editor Bunt, G. H. V. Published Bunt, G. H. V.. "Exemplum and Tale in John Gower's 'Confessio Amantis'." In Exemplum et Similitudo: Alexander the Great and Other Heroes as Points of Reference in Medieval l]Literature. Ed. Aerts, W. J. and Gosman, M.. Mediaevalia Groningana (8). Groningen: Egbert Forsten, 1988, pp. 145-155. Gower Subject Confessio Amantis Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Exemplum and Tale in John Gower's 'Confessio Amantis' Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Egbert Forsten, Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1988 Type The nature or genre of the resource Book Section PeerReviewed Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review This article offers a helpful comparison of literary condemnations of bribery by John Gower, William Langland, and others with what can be known about real cases of bribery from laws against it, actual prosecutions under the laws, and contemporary letters (chiefly the Pastons') showing the attitudes of litigants toward the need for bribery to achieve success in their cases. For Gowerians, the part on "Moral Arguments against Bribery" includes the passage from the "Confessio Amantis" where the chaplain of Venus tells Amans about the court of Lady Avarice with her servant Covoitise and his procurers Falswitnesse and Perjurie. Hole also describes how "Mirour de l'Omme" includes Lady Avarice's daughter Covetousness who bribes jurors and judges with silver and gold. In another passage, Gower accuses judges of being influenced by a letter from a great lord to go against justice. In "Different Forms of Bribery" Hole tells how in "Mirour de l'Homme" [sic] Gower described sheriffs being bribed to manipulate trials; he also said sheriffs might take money from both sides in a trial. Jurors were reported to be influenced by corrupt foremen. However, Hole expresses doubt whether Gower's claim to know a false juror who supported himself and his household from bribes was literally true or only an exemplum. Hole then moves on to real-life cases, and concludes from these that there "could be some truth" in Gower's claim that there were people who could make a living off bribery. Bribery arose because some legal personnel were underpaid--citing Gower's contempt for apprentice lawyers who learned to take their "hound's reward"--and because, pragmatically, many litigants felt bribery was unavoidable to compete against rivals who used it. [JL. Copyright. The John Gower Society. eJGN 40.2.] Author/Editor Author/Editor Hole, Jennifer. Published Parergon 37 (2020): 113-31. Gower Subject Confessio Amantis Mirour de l'Omme (Speculum Meditantis) Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Expediency Versus Ethics: The Problem of Bribery in Late Medieval England. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2020 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review Bone's concern is to discover "printer's copy"--manuscripts marked up for the press--used by pre-Elizabethan printers. He takes up Macaulay's surmise that "Caxton may have used the actual manuscript of the 'Confessio Amantis' given by Marchandine Hunnis to Magdalen College, Oxford, in 1610-11" (285)--that is, Oxford, Magdalen College, MS Lat. 213. This claim he finds "highly debatable," although there is suggestive evidence (e.g., only "the minutest differences in a space of two or three hundred lines together," passages marked with crosses and circles that also begin columns in Caxton's text) at least through line 4525, when "Caxton . . . evidently begins to follow a different type of manuscript." Yet Bone found "no reading that is conclusive" (285). Nonetheless, he leaves open the possibility that Magdalen College 213 was marked up by Caxton and/or his apprentices: " . . . if we accept the evidence of the Magdalen manuscript . . . it looks as though Caxton's compositors of 1483 marked sporadically with crosses or circles" (306). [RFY. Copyright. The John Gower Society. eJGN 41.1] Published Bone, Gavin. "Extant Manuscripts Printed by Wynkyn de Worde with Notes on the Owner, Roger Thorney." The Library, 4th ser. 12 (1931): 284-306. Gower Subject Facsimiles, Editions, and Translations Manuscripts and Textual Studies Confessio Amantis Author/Editor Author/Editor Bone, Gavin. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Extant Manuscripts Printed by Wynkyn de Worde with Notes on the Owner, Roger Thorney. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1931 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review Chapter 5 of Aers' study, "Reflections on Gower as 'Sapiens in Ethics and Politics'," was originally published in 1998 in R.F. Yeager's Re-Visioning Gower, and it was reviewed in JGN 18, no. 1, p. 17. A bit more briefly: Aers attacks Gower's reputation as a coherent moral philosopher by laying out some of the more obvious contradictions in his thought. Gower's advocacy of evangelical pacifism in VC Books 3 and 6, for instance, cannot be reconciled with the "unironic celebration of aristocratic violence" in his advice to the young King Richard to follow the example of his father (p. 107). Such a contradiction, Aers points out, was encouraged by the medieval church, where it had become "normalized and internalized" (p. 110). It is also allowed by the structure of VC, in which "the units . . . are paratactically sealed off from each other rather than brought into dialogue. . . . [VC's] paratactic mode becomes a powerful impediment to moral inquiry, to sustained critical reflection on the difficulties that are raised. The mode protects the poet from having to confront sharp contradictions in his ethics, let alone from having to explore their sources in the traditions he inherits and the culture he inhabits" (p. 110; his italics). The same sort of failure can be found in CA, in which the poet condemns the church for the degeneracy of its practices and for the mystification of its claims of spiritual authority yet upholds the church against the Wycliffites whose criticism he echoes. "Are we being invited to cultivate ironic reflections on the grounds of all doctrine, on the grounds of all claims to unfeigned, uninvented authority in matters concerning the divine?" (p. 117). No, Aers concludes; to a "paratactic mode" corresponds a "paratactic moralism" (p. 118). This provocative essay now stands in the company of chapters on Chaucer, Langland, the Gawain-poet, and Wyclif. Each of these Aers situates among the competing discourses on faith, ethics, and the nature of the church in late fourteenth-century England, when Wyclif and his followers raised questions about orthodox institutions and practices that prompted an increasing rigidity of doctrine and an increasing harshness of both ecclesiastical and secular attempts to control public discourse on theological topics. In such an atmosphere, each author inevitably takes stands with both doctrinal and politi-cal implications. One of Aers' principal themes, indeed, is that the doctrinal is political, not only because of the increasing involvement of secular institutions in ecclesiastical matters but also because of the common understanding on all sides of these debates that "faith" was not a purely personal commitment but membership and participation in the congregation of the faithful. The preference of some modern readers to imagine faith apart from the institutions in which it is embodied provides the opening for Aers' examination of Chaucer. He considers the implications of Griselda's unquestioning obedience of Walter in the context of contemporary discussions of faith and ethics, and he places it in contrast to the very different notions of obedience to authority embodied in the Second Nun's Tale. He also examines Chaucer's references to the sacraments. The absence of any allusion to the eucharist, even in the description of the Parson, suggests that Chau-cer's depiction of the church would have been congenial to his Wycliffite acquaintances even though Chaucer makes no pronouncement in favor of Wyclif's cause. The Gawain-poet comes off as rather breezy and superficial in his treatment of issues of faith and eth-ics in Aers' discussion. The heroic figure in Aers' study is Langland, who wrestles in a profound act of faith with the very issues that Aers examines, but who is not exempt from falling into his own contradictions, particularly on social issues, as Aers observes. Aers also finds a deep contradiction in Wyclif's notions of Christian discipleship, particularly for the laity, which he attributes to the theologian's own class interests and to his nationalistic politics. There is much more in these chapters than these few comments reveal, and Aers argues his case with both learning and conviction. The reason for offering even the briefest summary of the other portions of the book here is to give some indication of how Gower comes off by comparison to his contemporaries in Aers' hands, now that the chapter on Gower appears in its proper company. And in that context one has to feel that Aers has simply taken Gower considerably less seriously than he has the others. The contradiction in VC is an easy target, and if Gower does not carve out a sufficiently sophisticated position on church reform, it is also true that the structure of the church is not a central issue in CA. CA is centrally concerned, however, with issues of faith and ethics. In Genius, it gives us a priest who has duties both to God and to a sometimes tyrannical God of Love, and who must therefore mediate between them. In Book 7, moreover, Genius offers a lengthy discussion of the duties owed to secular authority (including unjust authority) and to God. Much of the poem can be read as a lengthy meditation on the sources of moral authority, raising questions that Gower did not reflect on to the same extent in his two earlier long works. Anyone deeply familiar with CA will find repeated echoes of the issues that Gower addresses in the chapters in Aers' book that are not concerned with Gower, and it is a bit of a disappointment to see the poem treated so superficially when its turn finally comes. Aers has a point to make about Gower, but it is a small one, and there is room for much larger. [PN. Copyright The John Gower Society. JGN 20.1] Author/Editor Author/Editor Aers, David Published Aers, David. "Faith, Ethics and Church: Writing in England, 1360-1409." Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 2000 ISBN 0-85991-561-1 Gower Subject Backgrounds and General Criticism Confessio Amantis Vox Clamantis Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Faith, Ethics and Church: Writing in England, 1360-1409 Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available D.S. Brewer, Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2000 Type The nature or genre of the resource Book NonPeerReviewed Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review "When texts make exemplary claims," Allen writes (p. 2), "they express an aspiration toward exact alignment among authorial purpose, narrative form, and audience response." Allen investigates the many possible disruptions of that alignment and the ways in which medieval authors such as Gower and Chaucer, through their consciousness of those disruptions, explore both the nature of fiction and the limits of exemplarity. Allen sets out the "contradictory strains" of what she calls the "exemplary mode" (declining to see it limited to a single genre) in her introduction, "Towards a Poetic of Exemplarity." Exemplary texts offer to teach a general moral truth based upon a particular event. They often attempt to control the interpretation of the event and its application through extra-narrative comment and through the comments of an "inscribed audience" made up of both the participants and spectators. But especially in the late medieval period, there is an increasing awareness of the historical contingency of all interpretation and therefore also of the role of the reading audience in creating meaning. There is also increasing awareness of the mediating effects of narration itself and of the paradox created by allowing affective response to shape if not to determine moral meaning. Concern over the inability to control the reader's response leads in some quarters to a Plato-like distrust of all representation. For others, of a more Aristotelian bent, the participation in the evaluation and the application of the particulars of a narrative – the very necessity of interpretation – implies that reading itself is a moral act and that "the very experience of exemplary discourse is itself a form of moral activity" (16). Consciousness of the problematic nature of the reader's role is reflected, in poems such as Chaucer's and Gower's, by the inclusion of a responding audience, whose interpretations are not just dependent upon their own circumstances but are also limited in comparison to those that the actual reading audience is invited to imagine; and consciousness of the role of formal structures in shaping moral meaning is reflected in the large number of Middle English exemplary texts that are "disjunctive, interrogative, ambiguous, or indeterminate. . . . Through aesthetic rather than simply directive methods, exemplary literature registers plural and unpredictable audiences. The literature itself raises questions of how its own contingent forms might constitute moral education and bring about social good" (23). Allen thus seeks to draw our attention back to "the profound medieval concern with the moral consequences of reading" (25). "Medieval exemplary literature," she writes (26), "does not simply demand obedience but inquires into its own social benefit, examines its own poetic indeterminacy, and argues for its audiences' moral freedom" (26). Gower provides the second of her major examples (pp. 53-82). She has less to say than one might expect from her introduction about the dialogue frame of the poem and about Amans' role as recipient of Genius' lessons. She does comment that, "Framed by the discussion of love between Amans and Genius, Venus's priest, the Confessio's examples are embedded in a courtly context that mediates their exemplary application to the public world invoked in the book's Prologue" (66-67). She thus implicitly defines the agenda of the poem as political, and more specifically as an attempt to mediate between private and public in a search for the meaning of the "common good." Gower conducts this search rhetorically, by way of copiousness, with all that that implies about the significance of each particular example and of the role of the reader in applying them to the general lesson: "The contingencies of various, and changing, political circumstances call into question the clarity of exemplary alignments among author, tale, and moral; kingship as constructed through exemplary discourse emerges as a continual, effortful process of imagining general unity. If examples make the singular common, they also indicate the degree to which, for Gower as for his classical predecessors, political virtue must be constantly reformulated rhetorically, in the re-presentation and reinterpretation of new exemplary instances" (67). In her discussion of this process, Allen naturally focuses on Book 7. She takes a fresh look at Gower's own discussion of rhetoric in 7.1507-1640, linking "plainness" to the illusion of a single, stable moral or political truth, "uninterrupted by figurative uses of language" (68), and Caesar's use of "colored" language, in his plea for mercy, with the "copious" procedure of CA itself, deriving a concept of political virtue from the multitude of contingent circumstances in which it must be exercised. In excluding the possibility of pity, "plainness," the rigid adherence to the law, is finally to be associated with tyranny, and proper governance is dependent not just upon eloquence and copiousness but upon fiction-making itself. Allen relies upon two principal examples for her argument, the tales of Lucrece and Virginia, and her rereading of the latter in comparison to its ultimate source in Livy provides some of the best evidence for her claims both about the design of CA and about the late medieval understanding of exempla. Genius describes the tale as a "wonder thing" (7.5134), moving it from the realm of history to that of fiction. He also dismisses each of the devices that Livy relies upon to defend Virginius' killing of his daughter as a defense of the Republic that Appius defiles. Instead, he describes Virginia's death as the result of an act of murderous rage, and "where Livy emphasizes the opposition between Virginius and Appius, Gower emphasizes their similarity. . . . Gower's Virginius, like Appius, acts according to an ungoverned will that overcomes his imaginative capacity for mercy toward his daughter" (77). Each is also guilty of a "literalizing interpretation of political fiction" (80), Appius of the analogy between ruler and ruled, Virginius of the analogy between the ordinary man and a king, and it is the latter that produces the more horrifying result as the father slays his daughter. "By shifting the tale away from the public realm in the direction of the familial, then, Gower calls attention to the unsteadiness of the relations between public and domestic tyrannies, and between public benefit and private desire. These relations emerge as necessarily metaphorical: it is the failure of both Appius and Virginius to recognize the metaphorical status of political fictions that generates their respective acts of cruelty. For Gower, the gap between individual desire and public policy must be mediated by the tools of fiction. Kingship, then, emerges as a process of reading political fictions, not only the theoretical fictions of the body politic, and the common profit, but also the narrative fictions of his own mirror for princes" (80). An earlier chapter treats The Book of the Knight of the Tower, arguing that the author's use of narrative implies a role for the reader in creating interpretation that is at odds with his desire to control his readers' education. Later chapters treat Chaucer's and Lydgate's versions of the tale of Virginia, the former destabilizing Virginia's exemplary value even more disturbingly than Gower, the latter responding to both of his predecessors in his own effort to "institute poetic order" (101); the "Interlude" attached to the post-Chaucerian "Tale of Beryn" as a response to "The Pardoner's Tale"; and Henryson's Testament of Cresseid as a response to Chaucer's Troilus and Criseyde. [PN. Copyright The John Gower Society. JGN 26.1] Author/Editor Author/Editor Allen, Elizabeth Published Allen, Elizabeth. "False Fables and Exemplary Truth in Later Middle English Literature." New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005 ISBN 978-1403967978 Gower Subject Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations Confessio Amantis Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource False Fables and Exemplary Truth in Later Middle English Literature. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Palgrave Macmillan, Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2005 Type The nature or genre of the resource Book PeerReviewed Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review "This dissertation . . . explores the varied representations of marriage and family in Middle English romance. While Middle English romances often act with disciplinary force to cultivate and popularize ideals about the family, many romances also stand in ambivalent relationship to this disciplinary function. Even if they end up valorizing the nuclear family, they do so through circuitous routes--such as depicting surrogate father-child relationships, interracial marriages, the loss of family members, and adultery--as they imagine alternatives means by which families cohere. . . . Chapter four focuses on a single romance--Gower's "Apollonius of Tyre"--arguing that how the loss of family members is memorialized creates a "virtual" family that is turned towards political ends. . . . In general, the thesis argues that while ecclesiastical ideas about the family in the high and late Middle Ages began to produce what we would now recognize as nuclear families, the Middle English romance remained a vigorous site where alternatives to doctrinal ideals about the family were imagined." Author/Editor Author/Editor Lim, Gary Published Lim, Gary. "Familiar estrangements: Reading family in Middle English romance." Ph.D. dissertation, City University of New York, 2009. Gower Subject Backgrounds and General Criticism Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Familiar estrangements: Reading family in Middle English romance. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2009 Type The nature or genre of the resource Thesis NonPeerReviewed Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review Not all will be per-suaded, but Bullón-Fernández has worked strenuously to build her case, and we can take it as a token of the maturity of Gower studies that these are the types of issues that we are now discussing. [PN. Copyright The John Gower Society. JGN 20.1] Father-daughter relationships occupy a prominent place in CA, Bullón-Fernández observes, and she discusses eleven particularly significant examples, including the two longest and most complex tales in the poem, "Constance" and "Apollonius of Tyre," and one of the most problematic, "Canace and Machaire." She sets out the broad lines of her argument in her first chapter. Gower uses the relationship between father and child, she asserts, as a device for exploring issues of power and authority not only in a family context but also in the political and textual realms. All three of these are informed by the same dynamics--the male authority figure appears to negotiate between the desire for an absolute control over the female subordinate figure and the constraints imposed by social forces (pp. 3-4). She thus treats incest not merely as a sin in a moral or religious sense but as an offense against society: the father, who has absolute authority over his daughter, is expected to use this authority to pass her on to somebody else, and his refusal to do so is a rejection of the patriarchal order from which his authority derives. The king's authority was also on occasion figured as that of a fa-ther towards his child, and the king's failure to recognize the limits on his authority, in his usurpation of their property rights, for instance, can thus be seen as an analogous disruption of patriarchal order. Bullón-Fernández draws heavily from the critics (notable among them Judith Butler) who have discussed the discursive nature of the incest taboo and the relation between the law of exogamy (which requires marriage outside the family) and the construction of patriarchal society, and who have explored the contradictions in the role attributed to the father in the system in which a female is the object of exchange and in the taboo that both creates and suppresses incestuous desire. Gower too explores the "gaps and fissures" (an expression that recurs several times in this book) inherent in patriarchal ideology. He is particularly concerned to mark the limits of the father's authority, and thus also the ruler's, pointedly directly his criticism to his own king, Richard II. Gower also uses the incest motive as a way of exploring his own role as author, imposing his authority on the narratives that he creates in his attempt to control their interpretation. He models the relation between artist and his creation as incestuous in the tale of Pygmaleon. Gower places Genius in the role of authority in the poem, and then he challenges that authority through Amans, through the multiplicity of Latin voices in the text of the poem, and through the contradictions in Genius' own lessons; thus "Gower's examination of the notion of incest, of absolute control over something or someone created by oneself, reveals his anxiety about his relationship with his own creation, the text, about his desire to have his text mirror his own will and his own meaning, unambiguously" (p. 37). The subsequent chapters offer very close readings of groups of related tales. There is space here to mention only some of the high points of Bullón-Fernández's argument. In chapter two she examines three tales in which incest hovers as a possibility but is averted, though the way in which the fathers and daughters carry out their roles also problematizes the patriarchal order within which incest is displaced. "Apollonius of Tyre" raises the largest number of issues. Bullón-Fernández reads the tale through Derrida's account (in his discussion of Rousseau) of the simultaneous origin of incest, society, and language. Apollonius and Thaise avert incest through their use of language while Antiochus' relation with his daughter takes place without language. Genius thus portrays incestuous desire as precultural, but Antiochus' behavior, including his use of a riddle to hide his sin, suggests nonetheless that incest is fundamentally discursive in origin. The tale shows the mutually reinforcing character of the ideologies that shape the power structures in family and nation and takes an optimistic view of the consequences of properly fulfilling one's role, but it also raises questions about Apollonius' construction of his self that reveal the instability of the notion of authority upon which patriarchy is itself constructed. In "The Three Questions," Peronelle's ostensible role as an example of humility on the model of Mary is at odds with the very active role that she plays, skillfully using language to assist her father and to achieve her own ambition of marrying a king. "The tale shows the potential both for female power and for the disruption of the system of exchange" (p. 68), but Peronelle's "potentially subversive empowerment through words ultimately works to sustain and repeat the accepted structures of kinship" (p. 74). In "Constance," the heroine performs her public duty and complies with the demands of the system of exchange at the expense of her own individuality, but only to an extent: her refusal to identify herself upon her arrival in both England and Rome indicates Genius' attempt to attribute to her a significant degree of both individuality and agency. With regard to her relation with her father, "her silences . . . suggest that she has a desire (an unspeakable desire) which, nevertheless, she controls" (p. 79). They thus also "contribute to the delimit and construct a domain of the unspeakable. The unspeakable is the refusal to 'communicate' in Lévi-Strauss's sense, that is, both the refusal to speak and the refusal to comply with the laws of exchange" (p. 82). Upon the death of her husband Alle, Constance is finally able to reaffirm her bond with her father. Genius does not conceal the incestuous implications of their reunion as she provides her father, for instance, with an heir and "he thus implies that daughters have a natural desire for their fathers that social laws, and particularly the incest taboo, have the function of repressing" (p. 86). In the portion of her analysis that has already appeared in print (see JGN 17, no. 1, pp 14-15), Bullón-Fernández argues that Constance's relation with her father is also meant to figure the relationship between the church and political authority. The church (represented in Constance) is made subordinate to and dependent upon lay masculine power, but in such a way as to undermine the royal pretensions of absolutism. Chapter three examines two tales, "The False Bachelor" and "Albinus and Rosemund," in which the roles of men and women are more sharply differentiated--the women, indeed, are merely passive objects of exchange--but in which the roles of the father and the husband are too easily interchanged as the woman is passed from one to the other, suggesting a fundamental flaw in the system of exchange. In "The False Bachelor," the way in which the emperor's son wins the hand of the sultan's daughter is made akin to the supplantation by which he loses her. Both tales also link male identity to chivalry and demonstrate some fundamental weaknesses of chivalric ideology. In "The False Bachelor" the constructedness of chivalric identity allows it so easily to be stolen by another knight, while in "Albinus and Rosemund," Albinus' boast, so integral a part of the chivalric accomplishment by which he wins Rosemund, proves to be inconsistent with his responsibilities as king and results in his undoing. In chapter four, Bullón-Fernández takes up "Leucothoe," "Virginia," and "Canace and Machaire," three tales in which the father slays his daughter. In the first two of these, the father's control of his daughter is tyrannically usurped by another male, but the father responds with his own tyrannical abuse of his daughter. Her virginity is thus merely a site for the exploration of the limits of authority in the private and public realms. Sexual desire is linked to the violation of private property, and Genius suggests that power, like sexual desire, is natural and inevitable but that it can and should be controlled. The political implications are clearest in "Virginia," in which the superior authority is a king rather than a god and in which justice is finally enacted by the "commune." "Virginia" also makes clear the analogy between the father's violation and the king's as he impinges upon his daughter's private rights out of a misplaced sense of possession. Such a relation is also explicit in "Canace and Machaire," in which the king and the father are the same. (This discussion has also previously appeared in print; see JGN 14, no. 2, pp. 6-7). Bullón-Fernández note that Eolus' anger has an incestuous character, being motivated less by his daughter's sin than by his loss of control over her body. His denial of the independence of his daughter serves as a metaphor for the abuse of authority in the public sphere, and it is equally self-destructive. Genius sympathizes with Canace because she is both procreator and also literary creator, as the author of her verse epistle to her brother. He is thus moved to condemn Eolus though he is silent about the fathers' abuse of their daughters in the two other similar tales. Genius' attempt to control the meaning of his stories puts him too in the position of fatherly authority, and the inconsistencies in his sympathies under-mine his attempts to establish the proper limits of that authority. In her fifth and final chapter, Bullón-Fernández examines the implications of Genius' fatherly role more closely. In "Rosiphelee," she argues, the heroine's vision reveals the discursive nature of courtly love ideology, and Genius replaces the father in compelling the daughter to sub-mit to the law of exogamy and to supply an heir. In "Jephthah's Daughter" he more clearly abuses his power as he overlooks the violence of the father and unfairly places blame on the daughter herself for dying still a virgin. Genius identifies with Pygmalion, finally, in the tale of the same name, as both he and the sculptor exercise the creative power primarily through their use of words. His identification leaves him "blind to the structures of authority and the incestuous implications involved in artistic creation" (p. 212), as evidenced by his omission of the allusions to the incestuous relationship between Pygmalion's grandson and his daughter found in both Ovid and Jean de Meun. "As a kind of father to his tales," moreover, "he himself is implicated in the relations of power that he tries to delimit in other tales, and, therefore, he himself is bound to transgress those limits" (ibid.). By his use of the figure of Genius, Gower explores his own desire to control the text. Like Jean de Meun, he refuses to impose a single authorial voice upon the poem. "The incestuous connotations in their versions of the myth [of Pygmalion]," however, "hint at their ambivalence, even anxiety, towards their own authority. These connotations remind us that the notion that a work of art will mirror its author's desire, the author's fantasy of absolute control over its meaning, is, ultimately, a problematic, even if irresistible, Pymalionesque fantasy" (pp. 214-15). This is obviously a challenging study, both because of the breadth of its concerns and because of the subtlety of some aspects of its argument. It is sure to have greatest appeal to those who share the author's theoretical interests. Those who read closely with one eye on the poem, however, are bound to find themselves raising some questions about some of Bullón-Fernández's readings. To take only a couple of examples: It is one thing to suggest that there is an analogy to be drawn between the supplantation that Genius identifies (and condemns) in "The False Bachelor" and the replacement of the sultan by his designated son-in-law in the same tale, and quite another to imply that there is little or no difference between the two actions. The tale seems designed, in fact, to draw the distinction between the legitimate and illegitimate means of winning the Sultan's daughter in marriage. In emphasizing the constructedness of chivalric identity in the tale, moreover, Bullón-Fernández passes over the fact that the plot is resolved by the decision of the emperor's son to reveal his true name just before he dies. She similarly elides the moral and immoral as Genius defines it in her discussion of "Albinus and Rosemund," treating Albinus' boasting as a constitutive part of his chivalric identity rather than as a violation of it. There may be little difference between a good knight and a bad knight from our point of view, but such differences are very carefully labeled in the poem. In her discussion of Apollonius' loving his daughter "kindely" before he recognizes her (pp. 58-59), Bullón-Fernández sees an ambiguity that allows her to argue that the prohibition of incest is shown in the tale to be verbally constructed rather than pre-verbal. Genius' (and Gower's) point, however, is surely the opposite: the line "yit he wiste nevere why" (8.1707) draws a distinction between "kinde" knowledge and rational knowledge in this episode just as as it does in the similar scene in the tale of Constance in which Alle is drawn to his son (2.1381-82), a passage that Bullón-Fernández does not refer to. She also stretches a bit when she suggests that Gower uses the examples of fathers abusing their daughters as a way of commenting on the political abuses of Richard II. The analogy that she draws (on pages 31, 33, 132-33, 136, 163 and 165) is based upon criticisms of the king's abuse of his subjects' property rights which did not occur, she admits when she first raises the issue on page 21, until 1397, long after the passages in question were com-posed. These, and many other similar quibbles, are the types of disagreements that one ought to expect in a study as dense and as ambitious as this one is. There are two more general issues that arise, however. One concerns the basis that we use for determining when a cigar is not merely a cigar. Bullón-Fernández would have us see the political and textual implications of the representations of incest in the poem. How do we know, however, that these should be read as something other than what they are offered as, as exam-ples in a lengthy disquisition on sexual ethics? There is no easy answer, but unfortu-nately for Bullón-Fernández's argument, there is less evidence in the poem itself for the implications that she draws than there is in other texts, some of which are very modern. Even the singling out of incest is problematic. She uses the association between tyranny and rape in "Athemas and Demophon" (she might also have cited Nero) as a justification for seeing political issues in questions of sexual laws, but then is the rape and mutilation of Philomela any less fraught with issues of abuse and power? Is there a real reason why victims of incest should be set apart from all the other examples of women who are abused in the Confessio? And if not, then the analogy starts to become very general indeed. The other major issue concerns Gower's role in these issues. Bullón-Fernández would have us see CA not merely as a chapter in the history of the western discursive construction of patriarchy and sexuality but rather as a sustained critique of that construction. She insistently distinguishes between Genius' position and Gower's in order to create a space from which Gower himself may share the views and concerns of twentieth-century theorists. This is the most difficult part of her case because in order to accept it, we have to accept virtually everything in her argument that precedes. Author/Editor Author/Editor Bullón-Fernández, María Published Bullón-Fernández, María. "Fathers and Daughters in Gower's Confessio Amantis: Authority, Family, State, and Writing." Publications of the John Gower Society, 5 . Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2000 Gower Subject Confessio Amantis Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Fathers and Daughters in Gower's Confessio Amantis: Authority, Family, State, and Writing. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available D. S. Brewer, Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2000 Type The nature or genre of the resource Book PeerReviewed Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Author/Editor Author/Editor Bullón-Fernández, María Published Bullón-Fernández, María. "Fathers and Daughters in John Gower's 'Confessio Amantis': Authority, Politics, and Gender in late medieval England." EngD thesis, Cornell University, 1995. Gower Subject Confessio Amantis Review ["This dissertation argues that in the Confessio Amantis John Gower uses the father-daughter relationship as the model on which he explores and raises complex social, political, and gender issues in connection with the definition and uses of paternal, kingly, and artistic authority. "Chapter One, 'Fathers and Daughters: Defining Authority,' discusses the methodological approach. I combine a feminist perspective, employing Judith Butler's theories on gender performativity and on the incest taboo, as well as Lynda Boose on the structure of father-daughter relationships, with a socio-historical perspective, drawing on David Aers' and Lee Patterson's studies on politics and literature in fourteenth-century England. In Chapter Two, 'Daughters and Father Figures: The "Tale of Albinus and Rosemund," "The Tale of the False Bachelor," and "Pygmaleon and the Statue,"' I examine three tales which problematize the structural resemblance underlying husband-wife and father-daughter relationships in the context of politics, in the case of the first two tales, and artistic creation, in the story of Pygmalion. Chapter Three, 'Liminal Daughters: The "Tale of Canace and Machaire," the "Tale of Virginia," and the "Tale of Leucothoe,"' studies three tales in which the daughters are the focal point for Genius' articulation of the father's anxiety over the control of their daughters' sexuality, thus highlighting the limits of the fathers' authority over them. As these fathers are crucial political figures, Gower also examines the limits of political authority. "In Chapter Four, '"Bot what maiden hire esposaile Wol tarie . . .": The "Tale of Rosiphelee" and the "Tale of Jepte,"' I analyze the ways in which social ideology regulates the daughter's sexuality, not so much through the fathers, but by different means -- even through the authority of a narrator/auctor like Genius. Chapter Five, 'Redeeming Daughters: The "Tale of the Three Questions," the "Tale of Constance," and "Apollonius of Tyre,"' centers on three tales in which the father-daughter relationships work in the interests of society and of the political system. Gower's focus on daughters generates an effective metaphor for political relations in fourteenth-century England." [JGN 15.2] Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Fathers and Daughters in John Gower's 'Confessio Amantis': Authority, Politics, and Gender in late medieval England Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1995 Type The nature or genre of the resource Thesis NonPeerReviewed Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review Examines the relation between in Latin gloss and vernacular tale in CA, using "Florent" and "Diogenes and Alexander" as principle examples. The glosses, with their invocation of the formal ordinatio and learned auctoritas of the scholastic tradition, both authorize the vernacular text and, in the very difference in language and position, subvert it. Gower exploits the paradoxical relation in order to win auctoritas for his poem even while placing the value of auctoritas itself in question. The tale of Florent offers a dramatic demonstration of its lesson on obedience, and Genius' concluding comments emphasize its didactic function. The gloss validates the tale in two ways: it carefully situates the tale in the poem's ordinatio; but paradoxically, it also emphasizes the most romance-like elements of the plot, the bewitching and restoration of the princess, lending validation, by its own language and lineage, to a vernacular literary form that by definition lacks auctoritas. The juxtaposition of two different interpretive strategies itself turns the tale into a philosophical puzzle which valorizes Gower's choice of the vernacular. In "Diogenes and Alexander," the tale recapitulates the choice offered between text and margin. Alexander is delighted to learn of the reputation of his teacher, but Diogenes dismisses his adulation, demonstrating his wisdom by his exercise of plain reason. The gloss authorizes the tale, but in its brevity, fails to displace it. The tale "confirms its own auctoritas by challenging the presumption of the commentary to act as an authorizing agent" (p. 14), a process that the commentary abets; and while the ME text depends on the Latin for its credibility, Gower foregrounds the issue of auctoritas in such as way as to appropriate authority for his vernacular text. [PN. Copright The John Gower Society. JGN 18.1] Author/Editor Author/Editor Batchelor, Patricia Published Batchelor, Patricia. "Feigned Truth and Exemplary Method in the Confessio Amantis." In Re-visioning Gower. Ed. Yeager, R.F.. Ashville, NC: Pegasus Press, 1998, pp. 1-15. Gower Subject Confessio Amantis Manuscripts and Textual Studies Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Feigned Truth and Exemplary Method in the Confessio Amantis. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Pegasus Press, Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1998 Type The nature or genre of the resource Book Section PeerReviewed Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review In having the righteous pagan in his "Tale of the Jew and the Pagan" express a philosophy based upon the "Golden Rule," Houlik-Ritchey notes, Gower locates the ethical foundations of Christianity in paganism and explicitly rejects its historical roots in Judaism, specifically in the injunction to "love thy neighbor" in Leviticus 19:18, an "alternate ethical kinship" (66) also reflected in the choice of Aristotle and the source of the instruction in CA Book 7. But viewing the tale through the lens of the "neighbor theory" of Kenneth Reinhard and others, Houlik-Ritchey argues that the tale also interrogates so reductive a relationship between Christianity and Judaism. The two men in the tale greet each other as both brothers and strangers, an ambiguous and indeterminate relationship that "marks them as neighbors" (67). While certainly unknown to Gower, the wide semantic field of the term "felawe" by which the Jew defines his own ethical obligation echoes rabbinical debates about the precise sense of "neighbor" in Leviticus 19:18, and "the pagan's astonished reaction to the Jew's speech figures, anachronistically, Christian judgment upon the limitations of Judaism 'as it has construed them'" (70; Houlik-Ritchey's emphasis). The pagan's own creed, moreover, echoes another injunction, to love strangers, in Leviticus 19:33-34. The tale takes place in a "wilderness," a setting in which both men are strangers as well as "felawes" in the sense of "traveling companions," and the men's respective ethical responsibilities are defined in this space removed from civilization yet also fraught with historical resonance, as it is located between Cairo and Babylon, the sites of Jewish exile. "In sum," Houlik-Ritchey concludes, "I argue that Gower's 'Tale of the Jew and the Pagan,' reimagining the origins of Christian ethics to efface its Jewish legacy, pinpoints a source of ambivalence regarding the ethical indebtedness of Christians to Jews that refuses to settle down. As I hope I have shown, the Jew and the Pagan are neighbors, and their ethical codes seem, in ways unforeseen and unintended by each, to share an ethical responsibility for those that chance, circumstance, and the physical world make proximate. Though neither man heeds his creed's call to neighbor-love in quite these terms, those implications of their analogous responsibility to each other are legible to us. The tale, by way of paganism, thus brings into sharp focus Gower's construction of a neighboring relationship between Judaism and Christianity. Gower's Jew and Pagan take us, in the end, back to where we historically began: Christianity's many debts to its Jewish neighbors" (73). Houlik-Ritchey has a great deal to offer to our understanding of this tale, but her essay contains a couple of odd statements (e.g. "Book VII is the book of Justice," 66), and her summary overlooks the pagan's prayer in 7.3300-09* and the implicit intervention of God in response, which one thinks might aid her case that the pagan is a proto-Christian but which would also seem to qualify a bit her emphasis upon the importance of the setting, particularly her reference to the "swift ecological punishment" as the wilderness "stalks the unethical man for the kill" in the form of the lion (72). [PN. Copyright. The John Gower Society. eJGN 35.1.] Author/Editor Author/Editor Houlik-Ritchey, Emily Published Houlik-Ritchey, Emily. "Fellows in the Wilderness: Neighborly Ethics in 'The Tale of the Jew and the Pagan'." South Atlantic Review 79.3-4 (2015), pp. 65-75. ISSN 0277-335X Gower Subject Confessio Amantis Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Fellows in the Wilderness: Neighborly Ethics in 'The Tale of the Jew and the Pagan' Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2015 Type The nature or genre of the resource Article PeerReviewed Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review Offers pedagogical strategies for confronting "literary representations of sexual violence" in a range of medieval romances and novelle within story collections, including Chaucer's "Knight's Tale" and "Franklin's Tale," and works by Malory, Bocaccio, Gower, and Marguerite de Navarre. Provides "reading approaches, discussion prompts, assignments, and critical contexts" intended to "to position students as critical co-investigators." Gower receives the slightest attention--less than a full paragraph on Thaise in "Apollonius" (pp. 42-43). [MA. Copyright. John Gower Society. eJGN 42.1] Author/Editor Author/Editor Torres, Sara V. McNamara, Roberta F. Published Torres, Sara V., and Rebecca F. McNamara. "Female Consent and Affective Resistance in Romance: Medieval Pedagogy and #MeToo." New Chaucer Studies: Pedagogy and Profession 2.1 (2021): 34-49. Open access at https://escholarship.org/uc/ncs_pedagogyandprofession. Gower Subject Confessio Amantis Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Female Consent and Affective Resistance in Romance: Medieval Pedagogy and #MeToo. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2021 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review This article is not exclusively about Gower, but it asks important questions about how the shifting role of women in late fourteenth- and fifteenth-century England is reflected in the work of Geoffrey Chaucer, John Gower, and Thomas Malory. Elmes argues that there was "a profound cultural shift in women's visibility and significance" (136), and that these authors now had to address a female audience that could affect their literary reputation. She associates this need to address female readers primarily with a secular audience with an increasing interest in social rather than religious status (136), and notes that with this changing audience, poets engaging in translation or adaption would have had good reason to alter their often misogynist sources (137). In particular, the inclusion of sequences featuring female friendships represents for Elmes a significant way for these authors to update their adapted stories for this growing new audience, and break from a misogynist tradition. She looks closely at a number of adapted narratives by all three of her target authors. Elmes provides a detailed reading of the "Tale of Albinus and Rosemund" (Confessio Amantis I.2459-2680), adapted from Paul the Deacon's eighth-century "Historia Langobardorum." Her primary focus is the introduction of the character Glodeside, expanded from the source, where she appears merely as "dressing maid" (146). Elmes notes that Gower's version is vague about Glodeside's identity (a maid, not necessarily Rosemund's personal servant), thus emphasizing Rosemund's great trust in Glodeside, and their less hierarchal relationship. She suggests that their relationship is implied to be "long-term and close" (147). She also notes that because of Gower's contextualization of this story around Albinus' pride, the culpability for the women involved in his murder is reduced: "Gower does not comment on the women's actions being treacherous" (148), as does his source. (One might question, however, whether he really needs to, as nearly every character in the story meets their doom through their pride.) For Elmes, Gower like Chaucer or Malory adapted these stories in a way that would be less troubling to a female audience; she also notes that since none of these authors was actually writing for female patrons (148), these choices indicate a genuine cultural shift, and not just an obsequious author trying to please a patron. Her conclusions about how audiences had apparently changed by the late fourteenth century to expect to see women interact with each other and receive authorial sympathy are well-supported and open up important questions about the role of women in the literary audiences of the later Middle Ages. [RAL. Copyright. John Gower Society. eJGN 42.1] Author/Editor Author/Editor Elmes, Melissa Ridley. Published Elmes, Melissa Ridley. "Female Friendship in Late Medieval English Literature: Cultural Translation in Chaucer, Gower, and Malory." In Karma Lochrie and Usha Vishnuvajjala, eds. Women's Friendship in Medieval Literature (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 2022). Pp. 135–54. Gower Subject Confessio Amantis Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Female Friendship in Late Medieval English Literature: Cultural Translation in Chaucer, Gower, and Malory. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2022 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review Schieberle opens the introduction to her monograph with a reading of Gower's tale of the "King, Wine, Women and Truth" from CA Book VII. She finds that "For Gower, 'King, Wine, Woman, and Truth' has a double function. First [the tale] models the process of advising princes that Gower . . . deploys in the Confessio overall: ethics are derived from historical and literary exempla that illustrate moral principles--here, the connection between women and truth. Second, the story embeds an image of feminine counsel within its account of ethical advising . . . . The conclusion of Gower's exemplum--that women and truth are intimately bound together--strongly implies that counsel itself is a feminized practice, a relationship between a subordinate adviser and a masculine ruler that enables wisdom, or 'trouthe'." (2) Her expansion of the observation forms the central argument of her study: "the connection between women and truth that Gower articulates here is not exclusive to him; various writers, including Chaucer, from the late fourteenth century and fifteenth century found in the notion of feminine counsel a compelling image for their own writing" (2). The following four chapters take up a writer and a work each: Chapter 1, Gower's CA; Chapter 2, Chaucer's "Legend of Good Women"; Chapter 3, Chaucer's "Melibee"; Chapter 4, Christine de Pizan's "Epistre Othea," as rendered by Stephen Scrope. For Gowerians, the most pertinent of these is the first, entitled "Women, Counsel, and Marriage Metaphors in John Gower's Confessio Amantis" (21-60). Schieberle characterizes the CA as "a vernacular mirror for princes that presents a remarkable sensitivity to women . . . . What makes Gower's mirror for princes unique, however, is its interest in women and their contributions both ot political culture and to the individual cultivation of virtue" (21). She offers close readings of two tales--"Florent" and "The Three Questions"--by way of proof for the claim that "Gower links advice to princes with women's counsel in order to imagine a gendered structure of authority and advice in which men and women work in tandem to create a harmonious whole" (21). In contrast to the essentially anti-feminist attitude of Giles of Rome, whose "De regimine principium" Gower knew and adapted, "Gower strikingly depicts women in both 'Florent' and 'Three Questions' as the "only" [Schieberle's italics] individual who can instruct a powerful male" (24). Male counsellors are generally less effective in advising their superiors than are women in the CA. "Men designated as counsellors simply give advice, and whether a superior acts upon it or not determines the outcome and the moral lesson. By contrast, in takes with prominent women counsellors such as 'Florent' and 'Three Questions,' the successful conclusion to the narrative hinges upon the woman's counsel and, in 'Three Questions' on her ability to correct her king without threatening his authority as ruler. Gower's women counsel boldly, whereas male counsellors, even when they are older, sage, and right (as in 'Rehoboam') rarely demand to be heard or correct the king. Only the 'Courtiers and the Fool' offers an exception: male courtiers give their king poor counsel, but the Fool obliquely admonishes him in a surprising contrast (VII.3945-4026). This exception proves the rule: as women generally do, the Fool lacks the expectation of authority or threat that allows him to open the king's eyes . . . . Gower more often uses women to represent the disenfranchised voice of morally and politically responsible counsel not provided by traditional male counsellors" (25). Schieberle develops an argument via word-field studies of "conseil," "avys," and "rede" that for Gower the last term meant both to read a text and interpret it carefully. In macrocosm, this means for the CA that "Gower's complex narratives require readers to reinvestigate Genius's imprecise moral lessons, rather than accept any of his morals as universal truths." His purpose, she believes, is to create a continuing movement to and fro between "fundamental ideals of love and politics." He uses this "mediating space" in "Florent" and "Three Questions" to "promote women counsellors as characters that can negotiate between amorous and political discourses," giving "prominence to women as model counsellors who intervene efficaciously in "political" [italics hers] impasses" (33). She follows these observations with careful readings of "Florent" and "Three Questions" (33-56). Ultimately, she argues, Gower's project is to create a "new vision of the polity" in which the ideal is a harmonious marriage, not a competition for power. She links this ideal with Gower's decision to write in English, and to advise in an oblique rather than a directive fashion, concluding "Gower's evidence that women may often be more effective counsellors than men equally conveys the argument that even though his 'feminized' text does not carry the same immediate authority as its paternal Latin predecessors, the CA's vernacular advice can nevertheless be fundamental in encouraging English audiences to embrace moral virtues" (60). [RFY. Copyright. The John Gower Society. eJGN 34.1] Author/Editor Author/Editor Schieberle, Misty Published Schieberle, Misty. "Feminized Counsel and the Literature of Advice in England, 1380-1500." Turnhout: Brepols, 2014 ISBN 978-2-503-55012-1 Gower Subject Confessio Amantis Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Feminized Counsel and the Literature of Advice in England, 1380-1500 Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Brepols, Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2014 Type The nature or genre of the resource Book PeerReviewed Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review "Even as the representation of women by medieval poets has been extensively studied, scholars have yet to explore how images of women have informed images of political counsel. In this study, I forge a connection between the "mirrors for princes" genre of advice giving and the subject of women. The connection between women and counsel, I argue, is one that poets found fruitful, vexing, enabling, and troublesome by turns. Following on the work of such scholars as Larry Scanlon, Richard Firth Green, Judith Ferster, David Wallace and Paul Strohm, I examine the major vernacular poetry of the late fourteenth and fifteenth century in light of both the mirrors for princes tradition and historical accounts of counsel. What distinguishes my work from prior scholarship is that I focus specifically on a neglected aspect of the history of counsel: the role of women in literary texts as counselors to kings. I examine selected Middle English works by John Gower, Geoffrey Chaucer, and Stephen Scrope, as well as manuscripts and French sources, in order to evaluate the association of women with political counsel. When authors articulate their instruction through female voices, the process of advice subsequently becomes a feminized one, and the female counselor emerges as a significant literary trope--as an outlet through which male poets articulate challenging political discourse. What this project ultimately demonstrates is that, far from exclusively using women's voices as an 'other' against which to define themselves, late medieval vernacular poets embraced the feminine as both a representation of their own subordination to kings and patrons, and a subject position from which to criticize, advise, and influence those in power. Understanding the poet's conception and development of female counselors is thus essential to understanding his or her own approach to the process of advice and the composing of politically-oriented narratives within the vernacular poetics of the late medieval period." See Schieberle's earlier essay on "'Thing which a man mai noght areche': Women and Counsel in Gower's Confessio Amantis," reviewed in JGN 26 no. 2. Author/Editor Author/Editor Schieberle, Misty Yvonne Published Schieberle, Misty Yvonne. "Feminized counsel: Representations of women and advice to princes in late medieval England." Ph.D, dissertation, University of Notre Dame, 2008. Gower Subject Backgrounds and General Criticism Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Feminized counsel: Representations of women and advice to princes in late medieval England Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2008 Type The nature or genre of the resource Thesis NonPeerReviewed Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Author/Editor Author/Editor Ferster, Judith Published Ferster, Judith. "Fictions of Advice: The Literature and Politics of Counsel in Late Medieval England." Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1996 Gower Subject Backgrounds and General Criticism Confessio Amantis Review Ferster's chapter on Gower, in this new study of the Fürstenspiegel tradition in the late Middle Ages, is a lengthened version of the essay entitled "O Political Gower" that appeared in the 1993 special issue of Mediaevalia (reviewed in JGN 13, no. 2, pp. 9-10). Her Mediaevalia piece focussed on the ways in which Gower embedded commentary on contemporary issues in the "Mirror for Princes" in Book 7 of CA. Mixing some subtle rereadings with a sharp alertness to context, she found beneath the poet's obvious deference to the king some pointed advice, particularly on the very subject of advice itself: "The key to [Richard's] success," Gower suggests, according to Ferster, "is not his choice among aristocratic advisors, but his willingness to bend to hear the complaints of the commoners" (Mediaevalia 16 [1993):41). Ferster broadens her analysis in this lengthened version by giving more attention to the language of CA, demonstrating both that Gower's deference is more marked in his English poem than it is in either MO or VC, and also that the language that he uses in describing petitions to kings echoes the idiom of contemporary political discourse. She also comments at greater length on what she sees as Gower's representation of the voice of the gentry in contemporary disputes. Finally, she adds a completely new discussion of a group of tales in Book 7 -- "Diogenes and Aristippus," "Tarquin and Aruns," and "Ahab and Micaiah" -- that, in the paradoxes they raise, seem to bring into question what she calls the "hermeneutics of counsel" and to suggest, before offering an alternative in attention to the vox populi, the futility of a king's dependence upon his own counsellors. The inclusion of her discussion of Gower within the frame of her broader study also allows Ferster to place Book 7 much more persuasively within the tradition of the "advice for princes" from which it derives. The two main themes of Ferster's book are the paradoxes and contradictions inherent in any situation in which a poet or author presumes to advise his king, and the ways in which each of the various works that make up the Fürstenspiegel tradition, beginning with the Secretum Secretorum, can be found to contain a specific contemporary agenda beneath the gestures of deference and the overt endorsement of the monarch's power that are inevitable to the genre. In England in particular, she argues, the principal of the community's right to impose limitations on the king was embodied in Magna Carta, and discussion of the reciprocal relations between monarch and subjects was often phrased in terms of the right to give and the duty to follow advice. By the fourteenth century there was an active community of political discourse, with different groups staking out their rights to advise the king, and several obvious and well known instances in which either the king himself was deposed or his powers limited. The dangers of opposing the king were nonetheless very real, and the trope of the king's need for good advice provided a justification for what might otherwise be taken as a presumption upon the king's power, while the genre of the manual of advice, offered in presumed deference to the king, could be the safest means for offering critical, if necessarily indirect, comment on policies of special importance to the author. Ferster includes chapters on James Yonge's 1422 English translation of the Secretum Secretorum, on Chaucer's Tale of Melibee, and on Hoccleve's Regement of Princes as well as on CA, and she concludes with a brief consideration of Machiavelli's The Prince. She sets the Melibee in the context of the Appellants' crisis, and argues that both the lapses in Prudence's judgment and Melibee's inability to put her advice into practice represent Chaucer's attempt to deconstruct the ideology of advice by which the Appellants justified their impositions upon Richard's authority. Hoccleve, she argues, mixes his endorsement of the legitimacy of the Lancastrian line with pointed criticism of Prince Henry and discussion of some of the most divisive issues of the last years of his father's reign. Each of these readings, like her comments on Book 7 of CA, raises particular problems, both in Ferster's techniques as a reader and in her interpretation of the contemporary political setting; in the former regard, her emphasis upon the apparently deliberate self-contradictions in both CA and the Melibee depends upon an expectation of a formal and thematic consistency in a work of this sort and of this period that is perhaps unreasonably high. The great merit of her book is that by juxtaposing these works and asking the same sorts of questions about them, she has removed the mask of the authors' self-presentation to their patrons and opened up the whole tradition of the advice to the king to a more critical and more revealing view; and in response to the doctrine that there is no possibility of escape from contemporary ideology, she has convincingly demonstrated the presence of a multitude of dissenting voices, however covert some may be, in the political discourse of late medieval England. [PN. Copyright The John Gower Society. JGN 16.1] Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Fictions of Advice: The Literature and Politics of Counsel in Late Medieval England Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available University of Pennsylvania Press, Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1996 Type The nature or genre of the resource Book PeerReviewed Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Author/Editor Author/Editor Fredell, Joel. Published Fredell, Joel. Fictions of Witness in the Confessio Amantis. The New Middle Ages. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2023. xvi, 324 pp. Gower Subject Confessio Amantis Minor Latin Poetry Manuscripts and Textual Studies Biography of Gower Review Fredell's "Fictions of Witness" studies the manuscripts of the "Confessio Amantis"--the Latin as well as the English portions, along with their layouts, marginalia, illustrations, and accompanying texts--and interprets how the presentation reflects not only the supervision and production of the manuscripts, but the political conditions and intentions to which these manuscripts bear witness. Fredell discusses the dates of the manuscripts--an important issue throughout his study--against the events and chronology of Lancastrian usurpation and the subsequent transfer of power from Henry IV to Henry V. "Since the earliest surviving manuscripts of the 'Confessio' may date from after the deposition of Richard," Fredell tells us, "we must consider the effects of Lancastrian patronage and ideology for all elements of the poem, Ricardian and Henrician" (129). Fredell negotiates, but does not wholly resolve, several important uncertainties covered by the qualifying phrase "'may' date from after the deposition" (my emphasis added here), though he goes on later to offer what he calls "a clear timeline of development and popularity" for the "public 'Confessio'," treating Henrician material first and linking it with "Lancastrian aspirations," but also with "Gower's three-pronged claims to laureate status in the early days of Henry IV." In Fredell's timeline the Ricardian version, as we have it in the manuscripts, dates from after the Henrician version--after "Henry IV began succumbing to a series of health crises" in 1405 (261)--and reflects the preferences of a Guildhall group of scribes (John Marchaunt foremost among them) who set the poem "in a distant Ricardian love court rather than among the immediacies of Henry's political problems" (262) as part of a larger program of promoting English literature by Gower, Chaucer, Hoccleve, and Lydgate. Fredell later complicates the notion of a simple distinction between Ricardian and Henrician versions of CA by arguing that some portions of the work (e.g., the "Parliament of Exemplary Lovers," 8.2440ff.), usually assumed to be "Ricardian" originals are more likely to have been written by Gower at or about the same time as he produced the "Henrician" revision--"that the whole great poem we have . . . may be the product of . . . the late 1390s and after" (267), labelled by Fredell the "late-state model" (263), a phrase that seems to conjoin historical, thematic, and textual concerns uncomfortably, and one used to call into question whether the poem ever circulated in a form that preceded it (279). Extracted from "Fictions of Witness" in this way, my reduction of Fredell's timeline does an injustice to the breadth of his study, which integrates aspects of Gower's life and death, wide-ranging events and trends in English political history, and numerous questions of codicology and manuscript study. The textual history of the CA is not the fundamental concern here, but Fredell criticizes G. C. Macaulay's three-recension theory at length (following Peter Nicholson and Derek Pearsall) as it underlies so much traditional (and inferential) understanding of Gower's political views--which Fredell largely anchors, instead, in interpretations of Gower's brief poems and marginalia that frame and/or accompany the body of CA (and VC) in manuscripts. These interpretations support Fredell's somewhat fuzzy idea of Gower's "laureate status"--the term here associated with John Fisher's grouping of four Gower poems as "laureate"--leaving unclear what this "status" may have entailed in the very early Lancastrian court (as do other studies; but see Robert J. Meyer-Lee, "Poets and Power" [2007] on Lydgate's importance in the application and understanding of the term, a caution against applying it too early in the fifteenth century). Fredell's timeline, however, does make clear that the extant "Confessios" (a plural he uses recurrently, sometimes confusingly: 2 versions? three recensions? forty-nine manuscripts?) are, for him, propaganda for this court rather than prophecy of Richard's demise, as some followers of the Macaulay theory would have it. Fredell bases his most detailed dating of the CA manuscripts on examination of illustrations and layout (a discussion lavishly accompanied by more than 100 color reproductions of pages and details), relying heavily on Kathleen L. Scott's "Later Gothic Manuscripts 1390–1490" (1996). He includes cautions about overly specific dates and dating techniques generally but, it must be said, he treats dates less cautiously at times--posing dates, qualifying them, and then reprising them or generally taking them for granted when pursuing his political readings and structuring his timeline. His provocative title prompts a need to understand how literary works pose, or can be posed, as "artifacts" of, or as "fictional witnesses" to (both are used throughout), particular political outlooks or attitudes, so dating is important to the entire study--more precise dating, perhaps, than is possible when based on approximations from manuscript illustrations reinforced by thematic interpretation. Nevertheless, this intricate study offers fresh, provocative assessments of the manuscripts and why they were produced when they were, informed by capacious knowledge, generally thorough attention to relevant scholarship, and sensitivity to historical context. It is a big task, one well worth doing, and one that might have been done better with tighter editing and proofing--better overall organization, more sharply defined terminology, less repetition, fewer rhetorical questions, unheeded qualifications, and more careful attention to relatively minor issues of execution, such as gaffs in layout, e.g., pp. 54 and 151; "Arial" for Arion(?), p. 75; residual mark-up, e.g., "'GowerAIGower'" and "MarchauntAIMarchaunt," p. 220; bolded "and," p. 160; LGW for LGM abbreviating Scott's work on several occasions, e.g., 184n26, 220n16, 221n17, and 244n52; etc.[MA. Copyright. John Gower Society. eJGN 43.1] Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Fictions of Witness in the "Confessio Amantis." Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2023 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review Supports the conclusions of G. C. Macaulay (1899-1902) and Traugott Naunin (1929) that Gower was acquainted with the theories of medieval rhetoric, and presents additional evidence to confirm Macaulay's opinion that Gower was familiar with the "Poetria Nova" of Geoffrey Vinsauf. Gower made extensive use of rhetorical colors. Author/Editor Author/Editor Daniels, Robertson B. Published Daniels, Robertson B. Figures of Rhetoric in John Gower's English Works. Ph.D. Dissertation. Yale University, 1934. Gower Subject Style, Rhetoric, and Versification Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Figures of Rhetoric in John Gower's English Works. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1934 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review Marshall argues that Chaucer's Miller is linked to the rebels of the 1381 Rising by his large, furnace-like mouth. Before analyzing Chaucer's imagery, she establishes the common currency in which the rebels' linguistic apparatus was coined, investigating four contemporary chroniclers (Thomas Walsingham, Henry Knighton, Jean Froissart, and the Anonimalle author) and John Gower's Visio Anglie in Book I of the Vox Clamantis. Marshall sees the chronicles presenting the ruling classes as the victims of the Rising; they depict the unfree peasantry attempting to "silence the ruling speech through the destruction of legal and official documents, most often with fire as their weapon of choice" (77). The chroniclers, she argues, paint the rebels intending to rewrite the documentary record to give themselves, as the "commons," the same rights under the king that other social groups enjoyed. Following the arguments of Steven Justice and Paul Strohm, Marshall shows that the chronicles censor and discredit the rebels' voice by reducing it to animal noises and an incoherent clamor, a strategy replicated by Gower in the "Beast Vision" of the Visio. Here the commoners are further demeaned by Gower's use of curtailed forms of their English names and a simplified syntax in which to represent their bestial behavior. Especially notable, in her view, is that, as their disturbance reaches its destructive zenith, the noise issuing from the peasants' mouths becomes sulfurous flames that consume everything. Chaucer's Miller, while not explicitly connected to the rebels of 1381, likewise violates the conventions of order, cries out in a loud voice, and, in parodying the Knight's philosophical romance with a bawdy fabliau, suppresses the ruling elite's elegance with a peasant's coarseness. That the Miller's vision is destructive of conventional values is "emphasized by the presence of his furnace-like mouth" (94). Nevertheless, Chaucer, unlike Gower, makes no effort to suppress or censor his character's voice, instead advising any troubled reader to simply choose a different story, for "the peasant word is only as destructive as the author, firstly, and the reader, secondly, allow it to be" (97). In the end, the narrator "provides the necessary guidance so that the Miller's 'forneys' may safely remain closer to the cold black color of his nostrils than the fiery red of his beard and effectively shows us how we may, indeed, play with fire" (97). [RJM. Copyright. The John Gower Society. eJGN 36.1] Author/Editor Author/Editor Marshall, Camille. Published Marshall, Camille. "Figuring the Dangers of the 'Greet Forneys': Chaucer and Gower's Timely (Mis)Reporting of the Peasant Voice." Comitatus: A Journal of Medieval and Renaissance Studies 46 (2015): 75-97. Gower Subject Vox Clamantis Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Figuring the Dangers of the 'Greet Forneys': Chaucer and Gower's Timely (Mis)Reporting of the Peasant Voice. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2015 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review Werthmüller seeks to "highlight some hitherto neglected details about the presence, but mostly about the absence of the -e" (179) in word-finally positioned monosyllabic adjectives in Middle English. Her analysis focuses on the CA, accessed through Macaulay's edition. The "Canterbury Tales" are used as a point of comparison. In addition to scansion, the study makes use of grammatical (adjectival inflection) and lexical (etymology, word-formation) evidence. Based on her critical scrutiny of potential instances of the apocope (omission) of the unstressed final-e in adjective + noun structures, Werthmüller finds that this feature, "and especially unconditioned [purely metrical] apocope, is virtually non-existent in the Confessio" (188). Hence, "Gower's grammar and metre is highly regular . . . even more regular than has been considered" (195). The findings include useful observations on distinguishing premodifying adjectives from adjective-noun compounds (such as the compound trew man, 192–194). Werthmüller concludes with the observation that "[v]ery little linguistic interest has been expressed so far towards Gower" (195). She emphasizes that "[i]t would be highly important to give him the linguistic attention that his contribution to the English language and literature deserves." (195). The lines of the CA discussed in the study comprise Macaulay's I. 680, 2479; II. 295, 660, 2341; III. 300, 301, 889, 900, 2346; IV. 2064; V. 1323-1324, 2877, 3009, 4627, 6155, 7391; VI. 707, 1501, 2049, 4702, 4791, 4976; VII.1640, 2560. [MP. Copyright. The John Gower Society. eJGN 38.1.] Author/Editor Author/Editor Werthmüller, Gyöngyi. Published Werthmüller, Gyöngyi. "Final -e in Gower's and Chaucer's Monosyllabic Premodifying Adjectives: A Grammatical/Metrical Analysis." In Approaches to Middle English: Variation, Contact and Change, ed. Juan Camillo Conde-Silvestre and Javier Calle-Martín (Frankfurt-am-Main: Peter Lang, 2015), 179-97. ISBN: 9783631655153. Gower Subject Style, Rhetoric, and Versification Language and Word Studies Confessio Amantis Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Final -e in Gower's and Chaucer's Monosyllabic Premodifying Adjectives: A Grammatical/Metrical Analysis. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2015 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review The essay argues that although Gower's meter has not been as widely respected as Chaucer's, it is in fact more regular and merits further study. The focus is final –e, strictly with respect to whether it was pronounced and not in terms of its phonetic value. This –e can arise either from a word's root or as an inflectional ending. Charts of percentages of when final –e appears (or not) for certain words affirm Gower's greater regularity in comparison to Chaucer. Further, this analysis suggests that Gower more than Chaucer tends to duplicate Romance stress patterns in multisyllabic words. The article does not address metrical context (e. g., how scansion might affect realization of a final-e), nor the syllabic irregularity of all late-medieval verse.[TWM. Copyright. The John Gower Society. eJGN 35.1.] Author/Editor Author/Editor Werthmüller, Gyöngyi Published Werthmüller, Gyöngyi. "Final -e in Gower's English Poetry, in Comparison with Chaucer's." South Atlantic Review 79.3-4 (2015), pp. 6-19. ISSN 0277-335X Gower Subject Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations Style, Rhetoric, and Versification Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Final -e in Gower's English Poetry, in Comparison with Chaucer's Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2015 Type The nature or genre of the resource Article PeerReviewed Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review Reprints "Apollonius of Tyre" from Macaulay (1899-1902), with glosses on bottom of page; brief introduction (pp. xx-xxii) on style. [RFY1981]. Author/Editor Author/Editor Stevick, Robert D., ed. Published Stevick, Robert D., ed. Five Middle English Narratives. New York: Bobbs-Merrill, 1967, pp. 37-97. Gower Subject Confessio Amantis Facsimiles, Editions, and Translations Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Five Middle English Narratives. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1967 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review Green investigates the "folklore custom, apparently widespread in Gower's day, that offers a clear analogy for both [the] conditions" (255) central to Gower's "Tale of Florent" and Chaucer's Wife of Bath's Tale: a hero under sentence of death who saves himself by marrying a hag, who holds his salvation in her power. "Moreover, this custom, recorded in the folklore of several European countries in the Middle Ages and early modern period, fully accords with . . . the air of legality that Gower conveys" (256); "it is the custom of 'mariage sous la potence'" (256). Green cites examples from several countries, spanning several centuries, of the belief that if a condemned man accepts an offer of marriage from a prostitute, he will be pardoned and saved from the gallows, on the grounds that (in the words of an English common lawyer in 1602) "both their ill lives may be bettered by soe holie an action" (258). There are, however, difficulties in adopting this claim: Green admits that "the comparative scarcity of evidence for the custom in medieval England must be conceded" (259). Nonetheless, Green thinks "mariage sous la potence" offers a "soft-analogue" (a term coined by Peter Beidler) to the Loathly Lady stories, and for him "the possibility that [Gower] was inspired by this custom seems . . . extremely strong" (262). [RFY. Copyright. The New Chaucer Society. JGN 30.1] Author/Editor Author/Editor Green, Richard Firth Published Green, Richard Firth. "Florent's 'Mariage sous la potence'." In John Gower, Trilingual Poet: Language, Translation, and Tradition. Ed. Dutton, Elisabeth and Hines, John, and Yeager, R.F. Cambridge: Brewer, 2010, pp. 254-62. Gower Subject Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations Confessio Amantis Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Florent's 'Mariage sous la potence' Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Brewer, Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2010 Type The nature or genre of the resource Book Section PeerReviewed Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Author/Editor Author/Editor Peck, Russell A Published Peck, Russell A. "Folklore and Powerful Women in Gower's 'Tale of Florent'." In The English "Loathly Lady" Tales: Boundaries, Traditions, Motifs. Ed. Passmore, S. Elizabeth and Carter, Susan. Kalamazoo, MI: Medieval Institute, 2007, pp. 100-146. Gower Subject Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations Confessio Amantis Review Peck argues that "John Gower's 'Tale of Florent' is the first sustained Loathly Lady narrative in English literature," and "that Gower, drawing on folk materials, put together the basic narrative as we know it. 'The Tale of Florent' then functioned as the primary literary source for 'The Wife of Bath's Tale' and, along with 'The Wife of Bath's Tale,' though less exclusively, for the Loathly Lady section of 'The Wedding of Sir Gawain and Dame Ragnelle" (p. 100). Although "there is an 'Irishness' about Gower's narrative as it subtly explores oppressions of disenfranchisement" (p. 102), Peck believes Gower could not have known Irish sources directly, as has sometimes been suggested; rather, he constructed his tale out of a congeries of folk motifs likely in oral circulation--"the cultural stock of ancient stories, whether Irish, English, French, Indian, or even beyond the Indo-European hegemony" (p. 105). For one thing, the concept of sovereignty in the Irish sources is essentially political; but "for Gower and Chaucer the notion of sovereignty is personal" and "psychological" (pp. 102, 103). Hence Peck connects "Florent" and WBT with coming-of-age narratives: Florent (and in his way Chaucer's nameless knight-rapist) is "full of puberty" (p. 108) and in need of an education in order to discover himself. Thus for Peck the landscape of tale is interior, as he makes clear when he breaks down its action into three parts: 1) "First life-exposure: The setting out;" 2) "Second Life: Social entanglement;" 3) "Third life: Discovery" (pp. 108-09). Florent, he points out, must gain insight into himself, and also into "that other outside himself, the hag to which he finds himself married…he must begin to understand women, that other half of humanity that nature has made both like and different from himself" (p. 112). While for Peck "women define and control all phases of the plot" (p. 112), it is (as in all folk-tales of the sort he describes) "the stepmother" who, "although [she] does not appear until the end of the tale…is the principal determinant, what might be called (with apologies to Greimas) the "destinateur" of the story, the 'why' behind the loathly hag's circumstance" (p. 113). This "destinateur" permits Peck to delineate Gower's hag with the truly "loathsome lady" of folktale "narratives we know so well from childhood": she who is "the bestower of curses in dozens of animal tales where beautiful youth, both male and female, get transformed into birds, serpents, cats, pigs, frogs, or whatever. Usually she is jealous--some cranky fairy or hateful elder person who lacks youth, beauty, or paramour; or perhaps she is one who has simply been passed over herself…but who has, nonetheless, the power to dock her enemies of their sovereignty, leaving them in a state of deformity until that sovereignty can be restored" (p. 113). Since Peck's primary focus is Florent's coming of age as a grown-up male, it is vital to his argument that this female hag-figure be female, and he insightfully identifies the underlying threat to the male psyche--"male fears of woman's sexuality that characterize folklore variants on the vagina dentata" (p. 115)--with Gower's hag-wife, and pointedly with Dame Ragnelle and both the Wife of Bath and her Loathly Lady surrogate (pp. 115-16). But his secondary focus (not much behind-hand, in essence) is to clarify the relationship of Chaucer's tale to Gower's, and less importantly to the "Ragnelle" version (although ultimately Peck will iterate the several ways "Ragnelle" agrees with Gower, while taking "the issues of the poem a step beyond its predecessors [p. 125]). Both in Chaucer's WBT, and especially in "Ragnelle," Peck states, "the 'vagina dentata' motif implicit in Gower's story is prominent" (p. 117). His argument here is complex and rich, and resists easy summary, since Chaucer's Wife as a narrator is quite different from Gower's Genius, vastly more invested and consequently exponentially more polyvalent in her shaping of the tale she tells. Peck's central point--and the difference he finds between Gower and Chaucer--is that "Gower's simpler narrative has become a showboat for the Wife's creative ingenuity, her 'queynte fantasye' of what in real life is too often denied to women" (p. 121). His conclusion is worth quoting "à la lettre": "The configuration of Loathly Lady motifs which Gower activates are attuned to matriarchal tensions that may be traced back to the most ancient of myths of furies and blessed ones negotiating with an Apollonian world of laws that codependent victims (victims of hatred, chance, ill-will, disenfranchisement) ultimately move beyond. As they proceed they discover a higher ethic, one founded in recognition of the other and the subsequent recovery of personal sovereignty that makes possible mutual love. This reading is distinctly Gowerian" (p. 126). [RFY. Copyright The John Gower Society. JGN 27.2] Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Folklore and Powerful Women in Gower's 'Tale of Florent' Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Medieval Institute, Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2007 Type The nature or genre of the resource Book Section PeerReviewed Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Author/Editor Author/Editor Strohm, Paul Published Strohm, Paul. "Form and Social Statement in Confessio Amantis and The Canterbury Tales." Studies in the Age of Chaucer 1 (1979), pp. 17-40. Gower Subject Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations Biography of Gower Confessio Amantis Review Strohm applies the Marxist concept of "mediation" (popularized by Raymond Williams) to Gower and Chaucer. Mediation is "the process by which a problematic social reality can be reconceived or restated, to appear in a work of art in a new and potentially more tractable guise" (17). The "problematic social reality" in the late fourteenth century is the increasing challenges to various social, political, and religious hierarchies. Strohm gives as examples the 1376 "Good Parliament," the "Merciless Parliament" of 1386-89, and the beginning of Richard II's despotism in 1397. In response to such factionalism, Gower in the CA prologue emphasizes that his poetry aims to overcome disorder and division and will "reconcile competing classes as did Arion" (27). Gower creates unity by showing the connections between love and kingly self-governance and through the teaching of Genius we learn that the "principal characteristic of viciousness in the Confessio is a tendency to thrust oneself into or overturn the rightful order of things – to alter one's station, to supplant others, to disrupt sanctioned relationships" (29). Gower further mediates political factionalism by creating an aesthetic structure which subordinates the individual tales to a larger vision and framework. By contrast, Chaucer's approach in the CT is through "juxtaposition of voices, perspectives, genres" (33). Finally, Strohm relates these aesthetic choices to the authors' biographies. Gower's financial and political independence made him more likely to promote traditional hierarchies. Chaucer was more subject to factionalism and thus saw reality as "comprised of a multiplicity of competing interests" (39). [CvD] Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Form and Social Statement in Confessio Amantis and The Canterbury Tales Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1979 Type The nature or genre of the resource Article PeerReviewed Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review "My project engages vernacular theology from the perspective of Middle English secular literature, examining how authors shape the late medieval discourse of the mixed life affecting self and community, as well as textual production--the cultural effects of ascetics. I argue that the 'Clerk's Tale,' the 'Confessio Amantis,' and the 'Play Called Wisdom' imagine separate applications of Walter Hilton's 'Medled Liyf' (or mixed life) and evaluate living as a secular ascetic. I contend that contrary to theological and ecclesiastical texts, these writings acknowledge lay piety's ascetic impulse as a secular act, tentatively in the fourteenth century and then more boldly in the fifteenth century." [JGN 33.2.] Author/Editor Author/Editor Stasik, Tamara Published Stasik, Tamara. "Forms of Living: Asceticism, Culture, and Articulating the "medeled liyf" in Late Medieval English Literature." PhD thesis, Indiana University, 2012. Gower Subject Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations Confessio Amantis Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Forms of Living: Asceticism, Culture, and Articulating the "medeled liyf" in Late Medieval English Literature. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2012 Type The nature or genre of the resource Thesis NonPeerReviewed Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Author/Editor Author/Editor Espie, Jeffrey George. Published Espie, Jeffrey George. Forms of Mediation: Chaucer, Spenser and English Literary History. Ph.D. Dissertation. University of Toronto, 2016. viii, 274 pp. Dissertation Abstracts International A78.08(E). Fully accessible via ProQuest Dissertations & Theses Global and at https://utoronto.scholaris.ca/items/28d36911-bcf5-4ce7-bc59-b40e5f14829d. Gower Subject Influence and Later Allusion Confessio Amantis Review "This dissertation argues that Spenser represents his relation to Chaucer as an unresolved dialectic between the desire for an intimate, immediate connection with him, and the recognition of the obstacles and enabling qualifications to it. Spenser's version of English literary history is the product of a double vision which balances a linear genealogy of direct influence with a more circumlocutory sequence of indirect mediation. . . . [Spenser] fashions an English poetic tradition that is more capacious and erratic than scholarship has previously acknowledged. Chaucer and Spenser are at the center of English literary history, but their connection is also guided by people usually kept at the periphery of it" (ii-iii)--including Gower and Lydgate. For Espie's take on Gower's (and Lydgate's) "mediation" of Chaucer in Spenser's " The Shepheardes Calender," see Espie's " (Un)couth: Chaucer, 'The Shepheardes Calender' and the Forms of Mediation," Spenser Studies 31-32 (2017): 243-71, a revision of pp. 26-61 of this dissertation. [MA] Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Forms of Mediation: Chaucer, Spenser and English Literary History. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2017 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review "This dissertation argues that the vernacular literature of late medieval England contributes importantly to the theorizing of psychological subjectivity and that this theorizing is connected fundamentally with the history of shame. Forms of Shame thus establishes an interpretive context for Middle English literature drawn from medieval theories of emotion. It describes and analyzes the ways in which the topic of shame was addressed, conceived, and critiqued prominently in sophisticated literary works by three late-medieval English authors--John Gower, Geoffrey Chaucer, and Thomas Hoccleve. Shame, the preeminent emotion of self-assessment, and its literary representation are enduring concerns for all of these authors. Shame acts as a diachronic intertextual thread linking these authors and their intellectual influences. The dialogues that they produce offer rich and subtle analyses of shame, ever shifting in their functions and their responses to cultural paradigms and to each other. The study argues, further, that the authors operate within a discursive matrix of shame that includes idealized norms of at least three broadly delineated emotional communities: ecclesiastic, chivalric, courtly. A theoretical understanding of shame--a problematic and protean feeling, uneasily categorized--remains largely unresolved at the end of the fourteenth century. The authors respond by embedding a discourse of shame within narrative representation in order to interrogate, test, and better understand the possibilities of shame within human experience. Moments of shame and narrative conflict caused by differences in its formulation heighten the awareness of self for a character or reader, reshaping the subjectivity of both agents in the process." [eJGN 43.1] Author/Editor Author/Editor Chelis, Theodore. Published Chelis, Theodore. "Forms of Shame: Gower, Chaucer, Hoccleve." Ph.D. Dissertation. Pennsylvania State University, 2022. Abstract available at https://etda.libraries.psu.edu/catalog/22564tbc126. Gower Subject Confessio Amantis Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Forms of Shame: Gower, Chaucer, Hoccleve. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2022 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review The volume makes available in published form Faccon's 2007 dissertation, "La Fortuna de la Confessio Amantis en la Península Ibérica: Estudio Comparativo de las Traducciones y Edicíon de MS Madrid, Real Biblioteca, II-3088 (rev. JGN 37.2). She presents a transcription and palaeographic discussion of Books I-IV in the Portuguese MS, a critical edition of those Books, a discussion of the courts of Castile and Portugal as literary environments for the translations of Portuguese and Castilian Confessios; includes a chronology of "references, studies and editions" of the Spanish and Portuguese translations from 1433-38 through her own doctoral defense in 2007 (pp. 32-35). Along with the text, readers may find useful the palaeographical section, for its reproduction of elements of the quite difficult Portuguese hand, as well as the full-page reproductions of selected folia (e.g., fol. 65v, p. 153), in black-and-white.] [RFY. Copyright. The John Gower Society. JGN 30.2] Author/Editor Author/Editor Faccon, Manuela Published Faccon, Manuela. "Fortuna de la Confessio Amantis en la Península Ibérica: el testimonio portugués." Zaragoza: Prensas Universitarius de Zaragoza, 2011 ISBN 9788415031352 Gower Subject Facsimiles, Editions, and Translations Confessio Amantis Manuscripts and Textual Studies Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Fortuna de la Confessio Amantis en la Península Ibérica: el testimonio portugués Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Prensas Universitarius de Zaragoza, Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2011 Type The nature or genre of the resource Book PeerReviewed Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review Abstract supplied by author: "The study of friendship in the West often occludes any serious consideration of late medieval discourses of friendship, particularly in the English tradition. Privileging either a classical tradition rooted in the writings of Plato, Aristotle, and Cicero or a modern liberal republican model, the study of friendship makes little room for medieval literature's go-betweens, sworn brothers, counselors, or allegorical friends. Medieval scholars have long recognized the ubiquity of friendship but commonly judge medieval friends to be forlorn, foresworn, and foredone. Taking my cue from emerging trends in affect theory and new formalism, I offer a reassessment of medieval friendship as it emerges in a body of literature close to the heart of the English literary cannon. [sic] The texts in each chapter are gathered according to a shared formal feature--dialogue, proverbial wisdom, the jealousy plot, and elegy--wherein I examine the affordances of the particular form. Throughout, I suggest that friendship in the Chaucer tradition operates in close proximity to a Boethian understanding of humanity's place in the universe, its subjection to the whims of Fortune, and its attempts to navigate a sublunary world of uncertainty. I argue that the oscillation between acknowledging friendship's ideals and accepting friendship's circumstances produces an uncertain ethics of friendship that simultaneously holds the friend up as an important and necessary intercessory figure while also holding the friend at distance lest the friendship fail or be found fraudulent." [John Gower Society eJGN 41.2.] Author/Editor Author/Editor Neel, Travis E. Published Neel, Travis E. "Fortune's Friends: Forms and Figures of Friendship in the Chaucer Tradition." Ph.D. Ohio State University, 2017. Fully accessible at http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/viewacc_num=osu1492705588117003 (accessed April 20, 2023). Gower Subject Backgrounds and General Criticism Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Fortune's Friends: Forms and Figures of Friendship in the Chaucer Tradition. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2017 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review Prints Ceix and Alceone," CA, Book IV, 2927-3123; "Adrian and Bardus," Book V, 4937-5163; reprinting Macaulay. Excellent notes and glossary. [RFY1981]. Author/Editor Author/Editor Sisam, Kenneth. ed. Published Sisam, Kenneth. ed. Fourteenth Century Verse and Prose. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1921. Reprinted with corrections, 1937, 1955, 1970, pp. 129-44. Gower Subject Confessio Amantis Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Fourteenth Century Verse and Prose. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1921 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review Only Bahr's final chapter, "Rewriting the Past, reassembling the Realm: The Trentham Manuscript of John Gower" (pp. 209-54), deals with Gower, and is very little changed from his article, "Reading Codicological Form in John Gower's Trentham Manuscript," previously published in "Studies in the Age of Chaucer" 33 (2011): 219-62, and reviewed in JGN 31.1 (2012) by PN. [RFY. Copyright. JGN 33.1] Author/Editor Author/Editor Bahr, Arthur W Published Bahr, Arthur W. "Fragments and Assemblages: Forming Compilations of Medieval London." Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2013 ISBN 978-0226924915 Gower Subject Manuscripts and Textual Studies Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Fragments and Assemblages: Forming Compilations of Medieval London Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available University of Chicago Press, Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2013 Type The nature or genre of the resource Book PeerReviewed Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review Urban's monograph is a direct outgrowth of his 2005 Aberystwyth dissertation; to some degree, the older bones remain visible beneath the newer flesh. His focus in this volume is "the two writers' uses of the past within their texts, their different conceptualizations of history and its use-value for the present, and the ways in which we can read these from the vantage point of our (post)modern present" (12). Conveniently, Urban takes the time early on to identify influences on his work (primarily "Queer Theory and Historicism" [45] but also Jameson, Benjamin, Baudrillard, Bakhtin, Nietzsche--and Patterson and Strohm) and to acquaint his readers with several key terms, as he intends to employ them: by "authority," he means "all types of social actions and literary texts that are invested with a certain amount of prominence and truth-value within social and literary discourses" (13); by "the past" and "history" he means "the cultural past on the one hand and its narrativisation ('history') on the other" (p. 13). These terms enable discussion of his larger subjects, "the poetics of the past and the politics of the present," the former describing "the ways in which writers (in the present case, Chaucer and Gower) incorporate the past and history into their own literary creations. The possible motivations for these uses are referred to throughout . . . as the politics of the present," i.e., intended and unintended "reasons for and effects of . . . the poetics of the past" (13). Chaucer and Gower, Urban claims, "placed old books, the wisdom they contain and its retrieval through their readerly and writerly activity at the centre of their poetic projects" (18). He proposes a three-fold approach: 1) to "trace this common theme through a representative sample of both poets' works, spanning most of their careers, starting mid-1370's and ending around the middle of the 1390's; 2) to analyze the "poetics of the past" by examining how Chaucer and Gower make use of old books; and 3) to "examine the texts' interventions in their contemporary political discourses, reading the politics of the Ricardian present through the lens provided by the poetics of the past" (18). Urban thus offers primary discussions of the House of Fame, Parliament of Fowls, Troilus and Criseyde, and the Canterbury Tales of the Nun's Priest, Physician, and "Melibeus," alongside Gower's Vox Clamantis (primarily the "Visio," but also the differing attitudes toward Richard in versions of Book 6) and Confessio Amantis both generally, as a larger work, and specifically, in a close reading of the "Tale of Virginia." Throughout, Urban recurrently returns to the Troy story as a kind of touchstone and exemplary arena in which to illuminate the contrast he locates at the heart of his study. Ultimately Urban finds that Chaucer and Gower differ in the uses to which they put old books in precisely those ways that they each engage with the politicized world of late fourteenth-century England. Chaucer's approach is ever "a veiled engagement with the socio-political context" (210) while Gower's "general concern with kingship and the state of English society" (217) shows him to be "at pains to formulate clear and unambiguous statements in his poetry" (223), in order to address and heal the division he sees all around him. [RFY. Copyright. The John Gower Society. JGN 28.2] Author/Editor Author/Editor Urban, Malte Published Urban, Malte. "Fragments: Past and Present in Chaucer and Gower." Bern: Peter Lang AG, 2009 Gower Subject Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations Vox Clamantis Confessio Amantis Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Fragments: Past and Present in Chaucer and Gower Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Peter Lang AG, Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2009 Type The nature or genre of the resource Book PeerReviewed Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review Bowers uses entente and the distinction that Chaucer and Gower create among different "narratological levels" as a way of exploring some key differences between Confessio Amantis and The Canterbury Tales. Chaucer never introduces himself except as a companion on the pilgrimage, though a more distinctively authorial voice does emerge in the Retraction, and we are constantly aware of the possibility that "Chaucer the poet" and "Chaucer the character" are not the same. The lack of any explicit statement, together with the fact that the poem remains unfinished, leaves the author's precise entente unclear, presumably deliberately. Gower introduces himself as poet in the Prologue, composing CA at Richard's behest, and introduces his character as lover only in Book 1. The explicit addition of another "level" "actually simplifies, rather than complicates, the project" (32), since it makes authorial entente clear. In WBPT, Chaucer introduces a third voice whose motives are different from those of both the poet and "Chaucer the character," and it is from such disjunctions that irony results. There is no such distinction, however, between Genius and the Gower of the Prologue, both of whom advocate reason for the purpose of restoring harmony to the world. WB's rejection of reason is analogous to the breakdown of order that occurs in the first fragment of CT, and therein lies the largest difference that Brower finds between the Gower's and Chaucer's poems. The two authors take "opposite views of remembrance" (36). Gower seeks to reform the present with lessons from the past: he moves from disorder to order by way of moderation and reason, and ends with certainty and optimism in his poem's epilogue. Chaucer moves from order to disorder by way of Pride (the storytelling contest) and division. There is no closure but only a retraction in which Chaucer finally turns his attention to the salvation of his soul. "He is just beginning what Gower has just ended. And this retraction is part of the reason why Chaucer's work is canonical and Gower's is not" (38). [PN. Copyright The John Gower Society: JGN 22.2] Author/Editor Author/Editor Bowers, Robert Published Bowers, Robert. "Frame is the Thing: Gower and Chaucer and Narrative Entente." In Geardagum 19 (1998), pp. 31-39. ISSN 1933-8724 Gower Subject Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations Language and Word Studies Confessio Amantis Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Frame is the Thing: Gower and Chaucer and Narrative Entente Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1998 Type The nature or genre of the resource Article PeerReviewed Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review "Examining the frame as a permeable boundary between the 'inside' and the 'outside' of a work of art, this study presents the frame as a strategic locus of value in the literary text, arguing that the frame both constitutes and is constituted by an interplay between stylistic 'insides' and ideological 'outsides'. Part One examines theoretical models and historical instances of framing manipulation. The first chapter considers the concept of framing as a theoretical tool for the interpretation of literature, and Chapter Two aligns ideological framing in the metaphorics of the medieval 'Book of Culture' with literal acts of framing in the arts by way of an account of framing in medieval drama, illuminated manuscripts, and the cornice of the traditional frame-tale. Chapter Three pursues the latter subject in more detail, and culminates in readings of framed works by Boccaccio, Gower, and Chaucer. Part Two of the study turns its attention to literal and political elements of framing in the commodified book: Chapter Four explores links between text and economies of value in the novel and in film, while Chapter Five focuses specifically on entitlement in the novel and on the framing possibilities of narrative voice. The final chapter traces ideological resonances of literary framing and frame-breaking in the explicitly political context of recent South African fiction." Author/Editor Author/Editor Macaskill, Brian Kenneth.  Published Macaskill, Brian Kenneth. Framing Value in Literature: Style and Ideology. Ph.D. Dissertation. University of Washington, 1989. Dissertation Abstracts International A50.08. Abstract available via ProQuest Dissertations & Theses Global. Gower Subject Confessio Amantis Style, Rhetoric, and Versification Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Framing Value in Literature: Style and Ideology. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1989 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review Bertolet sets Gower's many comments on the legal and social life of his city into the context of the concerns and anxieties embodied in the surviving civic records of London, particularly the Letter-Books and the Plea and Memoranda Rolls. He finds that both the governing authorities and the poet found "the principal threats to the civic order . . . to be deceptive trading, sedition, and dangerous speech" (45), or more concisely, in the three terms of Bertolet's title. His discussion of each of these in turn, each with particular examples drawn from the records, illuminates passages in each of Gower's three major poems and puts into relief some of the many differences in assumption between Gower and ourselves regarding the relation between the individual and the polis. "Common profit" (together with its opposite, "singular profit") assumes a literal economic sense in Bertolet's analysis as he discusses the background to the poet's protests against fraud and "division." He also documents a prevailing fear of disorder reflected in the many restraints upon what we would consider "free speech." "The charge then to the governors of London and its guilds, as Gower would agree," he concludes, "[was] to regulate the behavior of their members in their words and deeds, so that they eschew divisive practices and instead benefit the city through honest work and communal love" (62). [PN. Copyright The John Gower Society. JGN 27.1] Author/Editor Author/Editor Bertolet, Craig E Published Bertolet, Craig E. "Fraud, Division, and Lies: John Gower and London." In On John Gower: Essays at the Millennium. Ed. Yeager, R.F. Studies in Medieval Culture (46). Kalamazoo, MI: Medieval Institute, 2007, pp. 43-70. Gower Subject Backgrounds and General Criticism Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Fraud, Division, and Lies: John Gower and London Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Medieval Institute, Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2007 Type The nature or genre of the resource Book Section PeerReviewed Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review Butterfield offers a subtle and well-informed examination of the inter-penetration of French and English literary culture during the Ricardian period, emphasizing the mutuality of cultural influences that was a natural product of the close family ties between royal and aristocratic houses in contrast to a common tendency (among Anglophone writers) to emphasize the distinctness of the English from the French. In a brief consideration of the puy as an example of cultural imitation, Butterfield dismisses the suggestion of Gower's association as far-fetched since there is no evidence of continuity much beyond 1300; and in her discussion of the practice of quoting already existing refrains in new compositions she cites CB 25. In the final part of her essay she gives more direct attention to Gower as one whose works are "supremely poised between linguistic cultures" (p. 107). She compares CB 37 to a ballade of Guillaume Machaut, not to establish borrowing, though an argument for at least indirect influence would not be difficult to make, but to demonstrate how thoroughly at home Gower is in contemporary French poetic idiom, contrary to the judgment of those who have seen either a discontinuity with French courtly writing or a reaction against it in Gower's work. She also gives brief consideration to Traitie as a conclusion to CA, which it follows in 8 of the 10 MSS in which it is preserved. There is more than a single paradox to the relation, Butterfield points out, as Gower turns to more love poetry immediately after renouncing any further writing about love, and as he draws upon the authority of French to offer a very un-French defense of married love, creating an instability that is typical of the "endemic restlessness" of Gower's poetic career and his constant habit of setting up "oblique contrasts between different kinds of cultural perspectives" (p. 120). [PN. Copyright. The John Gower Society. JGN 20.1] Author/Editor Author/Editor Butterfield, Ardis. Published Minnis, A. J., Charlotte Morse, and Thorlac Turville-Petre, eds. "Essays on Ricardian Literature in Honour of J.A. Burrow." Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997. Pp. 82-120. Gower Subject Language and Word Studies Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations Cinkante Balades Traitié pour Essampler les Amants Marietz Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource French Culture and the Ricardian Court. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1997 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review List of works; brief, negative commentary. [RFY1981] Author/Editor Author/Editor Beers, Henry A. Published Beers, Henry A. From Chaucer to Tennyson. New York: Flood and Vincent, 1894, pp. 29, 33 Gower Subject Backgrounds and General Criticism Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource From Chaucer to Tennyson. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1894 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review Clogan argues that in the CA Gower "transformed traditional themes of rebuke from complaint to satire" (218). The distinction between complaint and satire is taken from John Peter's 1956 study Complaint and Satire in Early English Literature. Peter "drew a basic distinction between complaint, which is said to be impersonal, conceptual, Christian, corrective, and unsophisticated and satire, which is identified as being personal, sophisticated, flexible, and only superficially corrective in aim" (218). Clogan criticizes this "vague classification" (219), not least because it suggests that the taste for satire virtually died out from the time of St. Jerome until the Renaissance. According to Clogan, Gower included many traditional themes of complaint in the CA – e.g., the attacks on the clergy, Lollards, and usurers – but they fit within "a larger scheme of satire" (219). Gower's satirical approach is seen in the confessional framework of the poem, which is a parody of the penitential manuals. Especially ironic is the figure of Genius, who is both the priest of Venus and has to teach the lesson of the Seven Deadly Sins. Clogan observes that "Genius signifies the only sin which the Lover does not confess" (220). Amans too is treated satirically. As a senex amans he "becomes the counterpart of Chaucer's January as he tries to possess his young wife" (220). Although Gower thus satirizes the penitential and courtly traditions, yet "his writings can also be labeled moral because their satirical view of the world ranges from ironic contrasts to a burlesque dignity" (221). Clogan further cautions "against placing too much significance on the political and social views since the Confessio is essentially concerned with the divine perspective in human affairs" (221). This perspective is evident in the great "web of contrasts which bind and unite the poem" (221), contrasts which ultimately depend on irony and satire for their effect. [CvD] Author/Editor Author/Editor Clogan, Paul M Published Clogan, Paul M. "From Complaint to Satire: The Art of the Confessio Amantis." Medievalia et Humanistica 4 (1973), pp. 217-222. Gower Subject Confessio Amantis Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource From Complaint to Satire: The Art of the Confessio Amantis Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1973 Type The nature or genre of the resource Article PeerReviewed Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review In an earlier essay (in Chaucer Review 34 [2000]; see JGN 19.2), Duffell credited Chaucer with the invention of the iambic pentameter in English, but he noted Gower's use of the new meter in "In Praise of Peace," referring both to the influence of Italian models. He also mentioned Gower's experiments with a 10-syllable line in French in CB. This essay presents the results of a much closer collaborative examination of Gower's 10-syllable lines and credits Gower with an important role in the development of English metrics. Gower's interest in metrical experimentation, the authors argue, is demonstrated by the regularity of the octosyllables in both MO, in contrast to the looseness of his Anglo-Norman contemporaries, and CA, in which the "perfectly iambic" octosyllables (395), more regular than Chaucer's of the same period, mark Gower as "the first poet to employ the canonical iambic tetrameter in English" (396). Chaucer introduced the 10-syllable line in English in "Troilus and Criseyde," following his trip to Italy, and Gower's pentameters (in IPP and in Amans' petition to Venus in CA 8:2217-2300) come afterwards, but following his practice in the rest of CA, his pentameters are iambic, and they are "more regular than Chaucer's in both rhythm and syllable count" (394). The authors conclude that "we should ... regard the two poets as collaborators in a series of metrical experiments (involving verse in two languages), and acknowledge Gower as the first English poet to employ meters that were stress-syllabic in the strictest sense, regular in both syllable count and accentuation" (395-96). A large part of this essay consists of a classification of Gower's decasyllables into 8 types, 4 more common in French and 4 more common in Italian, based on the use and placement of the caesura. More interesting is the authors' establishment of the regularity of Gower's verse, because they offer some specific observations on how they assume that his verse should be recited. Final schwa, they note, is elided before all words beginning with a vowel or a diphthong, and also before all words beginning with the letter h, "whether of Romance or Germanic origin" (387). They also list a certain number of common words in which final schwa was not pronounced even when it stood before a consonant, and some others in which medial schwa appears regularly to be elided (387). They count only 12 lines in which a strong syllable falls on what should be a weak position, but 10 of these involve disyllabic prepositions, which because of their grammatically subordinate status probably did not receive prominent metrical stress on either syllable (391). Other apparent exceptions involve words of French origin which may have retained their original accentuation (392-93) and seven words of Germanic origin, which may represent genuine inversion but which also might also, the authors claim, have borne a stress on the second syllable. [PN. Copyright The John Gower Society. JGN 28.2] Author/Editor Author/Editor Duffell, Martin J. Billy, Dominique Published Duffell, Martin J. and Billy, Dominique. "From Decasyllable to Pentameter: Gower's Contribution to English Metrics." Chaucer Review 38 (2004), pp. 383-400. ISSN 0009-2002 Gower Subject Style, Rhetoric, and Versification Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource From Decasyllable to Pentameter: Gower's Contribution to English Metrics. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Penn State University Press, Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2004 Type The nature or genre of the resource Article PeerReviewed Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review This essay analyzes the manner in which the marginalia in the CA were transferred to the extant manuscripts of the Iberian translations. Pérez-Fernández establishes that the key to understand this transmission is the cultural and intellectual context in which both the Portuguese and Castilian versions of the Gowerian poem were produced: the Latin apparatus of the original text, rather than being translated more literally, as is the case with the English poem, is "reduced to the minimum, whether omitted (in the case of the Latin verses) or translated into the vernacular (the rubrics)" (126). The fact that in Iberia in the late Middle Ages most translations were commissioned by noblemen with limited knowledge of Latin who gave some signs of discomfort with the marginalia from the medieval learned tradition leads Pérez-Fernández to propose that the near-absence of Latin verses (and most of the glosses) in the Portuguese and Castilian manuscripts of the CA was a strategy of adaptation to accommodate the needs of this new readership. [ASH. Copyright. The John Gower Society. eJGN 38.1.] Author/Editor Author/Editor Peréz-Fernández, Tamara. Published Peréz-Fernández, Tamara. "From England to Iberia: The Transmission of Marginal Elements in the Iberian Translations of Gower's Confessio Amantis." In Text, Transmission, and Transformation in the European Middle Ages, 1000-1500, ed. Carrie Griffin and Emer Purcell (Turnhout: Brepols, 2018), 119-40. ISBN: 9782503567402; 9782503567419. Gower Subject Confessio Amantis Facsimiles, Editions, and Translations Manuscripts and Textual Studies Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource From England to Iberia: The Transmission of Marginal Elements in the Iberian Translations of Gower's "Confessio Amantis." Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2018 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review Gower figures only once, but interestingly, in Van Dussen's study of Lollard/Hussite connections, primarily in the fifteenth century. Recently discovered in Prague, Knihovna Metropolitni kapituly MS H. 15 are three eulogies to Queen Anne, copied on site by an anonymous Bohemian visiting her Westminster tomb, in front of which he notes they hung. The third of these, "Nobis natura florem," Van Dussen attributes to Richard Maidstone, rejecting Gower's authorship in the process (26-27). [RFY. Copyright. John Gower Society. eJGN 43.1] Author/Editor Author/Editor Van Dussen, Michael. Published Van Dussen, Michael. From England to to Bohemia: Heresy and Communication in the Later Middle Ages. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012. Gower Subject Backgrounds and General Criticism Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource From England to to Bohemia: Heresy and Communication in the Later Middle Ages. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2012 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review Examine Gower's use of wordplay in VC 1 to depict the most terrifying aspects of rebellion, particularly a series of puns (modeled on Geoffrey of Vinsauf and Alan of Lille) in which terms such as "caput," "pes," and "cauda" can refer either to parts of the body or to parts of a word or line. Gower begins with the riddle on the parts of his own name at the beginning of Book 1. "By making his readers aware of a word's body – its "pedes," "caput," "membra" – he prepares us for the rebels' heads and feet in the ensuing chapters. For him, syllabic play provides more than a poetic opening: it offers a way of seeing social inversion through a linguistic metaphor, in which the peasants, and not the poet, do the cropping and adding of heads to empower themselves" (148). In the rest of Book 1, the peasants are transformed twice, first into domestic beasts and then into wild ones, as they also seek to monstrously transform society, and in the passages that Zarins disentangles for us, Gower's linguistic play captures the violence and perversion of both transformations. [PN. Copyright The John Gower Society. JGN 27.1]. Reprinted in Literature Criticism from 1400 to 1800, ed. Lawrence J. Trudeau, vol. 264 (Detroit: Gale, 2017), pp. 210-17. Author/Editor Author/Editor Zarins, Kim Published Zarins, Kim. "From Head to Foot: Syllabic Play and Metamorphosis in Book I of Gower's Vox Clamantis." In On John Gower: Essays at the Millennium. Ed. Yeager, R.F. Studies in Medieval Culture (46). Kalamazoo, MI: Medieval Institute, 2007, pp. 144-60. Gower Subject Style, Rhetoric, and Versification Vox Clamantis Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource From Head to Foot: Syllabic Play and Metamorphosis in Book I of Gower's Vox Clamantis Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Medieval Institute, Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2007 Type The nature or genre of the resource Book Section PeerReviewed Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review Cannon's own earlier studies of surviving fourteenth-century textbooks concluded that, contrary to the testimony of Higden and Trevisa, instruction in literacy at the time that Langland, Chaucer, and Gower all learned to read took place neither in French nor in English but in Latin: "from the beginning of their education children were not only taught to read and write by construing Latin, they were taught to read and write in Latin" (351). Later, each of these poets "needed to move their very understanding of language and its grammar from the Latin forms and terminology in which they learned it to the English in which they were writing" (352). Their consciousness of that process is reflected, he argues, in the use of grammar as a trope in both Langland and Chaucer, and he proposes that "the period at issue here might be best called the 'Era of Grammaticalization.' That designation would describe the way in which English literature of the fourteenth century so often used grammatical concepts and terminology to shape allegory and image that it elevated grammar into something like a literary technique. It would also describe the way such literature hewed so close to the practices of basic literacy training that literary production often proceeded by means of the simplest exercises used to teach children how to read and write" (352-53). Gower figures only briefly in Cannon's essay, in a paragraph on schoolroom translation exercises, "which are most significant to Middle English poetry . . . where they are not anterior to the poem's English but parallel to it, where a poem can be said to unfold as a translation into and out of English for its entire length" (357). He suggests that the Latin of the CA not be dismissed as mere apparatus: "The Latin and English in the 'Confessio' are often precise equivalents, a fact embraced by the scribes who copied the poem and placed both Latin and English together in the main column of text (Pearsall, 'Gower's Latin' 14) or, on one occasion, made the Latin so large and colorful that it appears as if 'the English text is to be read as a commentary on the Latin . . . rather than vice versa' (Echard and Fanger xxvii-xxviii). In all such cases the 'Confessio' takes the form of literacy training, a grammaticalization insofar as it pairs what could be English prompts with their 'Latyns' or Latin prompts with their 'vulgars' for its entire length" (357). [PN. Copyright eJGN 34.1] Author/Editor Author/Editor Cannon, Christopher Published Cannon, Christopher. "From Literacy to Literature: Elementary Learning and the Middle English Poet." PMLA 129 (2014), pp. 349-64. Gower Subject Language and Word Studies Confessio Amantis Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource From Literacy to Literature: Elementary Learning and the Middle English Poet Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2014 Type The nature or genre of the resource Article PeerReviewed Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review Cannon's topic is grammar schools, in which "the most basic literacy training" took place, "and that training's lasting and significant effects" in "the long moment during which a profusion of writing in Latin slowly mutated into a profusion of writing in English" (4). His basic argument is that what was learned in these schools "shaped . . . writing ever afterwards" (8). He takes Chaucer (his major focus), Langland, Gower, and (less often) Trevisa and the "Gawain" poet as his primary examples, while admitting that "our ignorance about their schooling is almost complete" (9). Training in grammar school inculcated the idea of language with rules and structure, while also encouraging "experimentation and exploration [i.e., composing verses], since knowledge of grammar was most fully proved when a student could deploy it to make phrases or sentences that were wholly new" (13). Cannon identifies the influence of Gower's grammar-school training throughout the "Confessio Amantis": Genius is presented as a kind of school-master, exhibiting "grammar-school style" in his tutelage of Amans (117-18); throughout, the Latin verses and prose glosses "translate" the English and vice-versa, thus replicating "the translation exercise that was one of the grammar school's most basic pedagogical forms." Medieval readers would have understood the Latin texts as "integral to the English" (146-147); the structure and approach to ethical narrative in the CA are derived (164-65) from early models encountered in the "Distichs of Cato," the "Fables of Avianus," debates from the "Eclogue" of Theodulus, Maximian's elegies, and "The Rape of Proserpina," for tragedy (on "Distichs" and "Avianus" see also 186-90). Cannon also identifies what he calls "patchwork"--the "piecing together" of lines, phrases, and images first discovered in grammar texts with original sections--as characteristic of "Ricardian style" as represented by Chaucer, Gower, and Langland (194-95). [RFY. Copyright. John Gower Society. eJGN 43.1] Author/Editor Author/Editor Cannon, Christopher. Published Cannon, Christopher. From Literacy to Literature: England 1300-1400. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016. Gower Subject Confessio Amantis Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource From Literacy to Literature: England 1300-1400. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2016 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review Viúla argues that "Confessio Amantis" was translated into Portuguese and then Castilian through the influence of Henry Despenser, bishop of Norwich (1370-1406). Despenser, a collector of fine books and "a consumer of contemporary poetry" (137), was a close associate of Philippa of Lancaster, eldest daughter of John of Gaunt and Blanche of Lancaster and, by marriage, Queen of Portugal (1387-1415). Although not pro-Lancastrian, Despenser escaped imprisonment during Henry Bolingbroke's struggles with Richard II through Philippa's interventions. Letters of gratitude from Despenser to Philippa attest to her support. Another, from Philippa herself, thanks Despenser for various gifts, to be conveyed to her by her treasurer, "Thomas Payn" (136). This man may have been the father of Robert Payn, another member of Philippa's household and translator of the Portuguese version of CA. The CA probably "made its way to Philippa in Portugal from a source outside the Lancastrian affinity, as a presentation copy from Henry Despenser" (137). [MPK. Copyright. John Gower Society. eJGN 42.2] Author/Editor Author/Editor Viúla, Tiago de Faria, Published Viúla, Tiago de Faria, "From Norwich to Lisbon: Factionalism, Personal Association, and Conveying the "Confessio Amantis." In John Gower in England and Iberia: Manuscripts, Influences, Reception. Ed. Ana Sáez-Hidalgo and R. F. Yeager. Publications of the John Gower Society X. Cambridge, UK: D. S. Brewer, 2014. Pp. 131-38. Gower Subject Coinfessio Amantis Facsimiles, Editions, and Translations Manuscripts and Textual Studies Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource From Norwich to Lisbon: Factionalism, Personal Association, and Conveying the "Confessio Amantis." Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2014 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review Bertolet surveys the development of the story of Lucretia from its earliest surviving classical versions, in Livy and Ovid, through its most important medieval retellings to its appearance in Chaucer's Legend of Good Women and Gower's Confession Amntis. The medieval versions, beginning with Jerome and Augustine, show an increasing interest in the predicament of Lucretia and a preoccupation with the individual soul, and a corresponding lack of interest in the social dimensions of the story, including the role of the family of the victim and the overthrow of the tyranny and oppression represented by the rape. Chaucer too focuses on the personal rather than the public aspect of the story. Gower, however, returns to the emphases of Livy's version, giving central importance to the two male characters, Aruns and Brutus; denouncing Aruns' betrayal of both civic and social responsibility, and of both kingship and kinship; and casting the story as a struggle between a willful tyrant and the power of the people. Aruns exemplifies the central sin of "division"; Brutus exemplifies the love of family and of nation as a unitive principle. Brutus' role as reformer resembles that which Gower assumes for himself, as spokesman of the voice of the people seeking restoration of order and of peace. And Aruns' fate constitutes a warning to the king of the dangers of popular revolt, a warning that went unheeded as Richard suffered the same fate as Aruns when the future Henry IV assumed the role of Brutus. [PN. Copyright The John Gower Society. JGN 11.2] Author/Editor Author/Editor Bertolet, Craig E Published Bertolet, Craig E. "From Revenge to Reform: The Changing Face of 'Lucrece' and Its Meaning in Gower's Confessio Amantis." Philological Quarterly 70 (1991), pp. 403-421. Gower Subject Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations Confessio Amantis Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource From Revenge to Reform: The Changing Face of 'Lucrece' and Its Meaning in Gower's Confessio Amantis Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1991 Type The nature or genre of the resource Article PeerReviewed Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review Morse cites a number of recent studies of Gower (including works by Middleton, Yeager, Scanlon, and Spearing) in her survey of critical work on the Ricardian period that appeared following the publication of Burrow's ground-breaking study in 1971. [PN. Copyright The John Gower Society. JGN 20.1] Author/Editor Author/Editor Morse, Charlotte. Published Minnis, A. J., Charlotte Morse, and Thorlac Turville-Petre, eds. "Essays on Ricardian Literature in Honour of J.A. Burrow." Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997. Pp. 316-44. Gower Subject Backgrounds and General Criticism Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource From Ricardian Poetry to Ricardian Studies. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1997 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review This wide-ranging article discusses how medical lore on the pneuma/spiritus (the bodily spirit or spirits) became an established theme and plot device, both in medieval European romance, and in personal accounts of profound religious experience. Among the many examples is a paragraph on Gower's "Tale of Apollonius" (99). Saunders begins with a highly complex discussion of the spirits according to Galen, Avicenna's "Canon of Medicine," and European translations of these authorities. Within the heart, in synchrony with the breath, the spirits were formed of mingled air and blood to animate the three-part soul, including the emotions, which were "dramatically written on the body through the flight of breath" (88). In grief or sorrow, the vital spirits withdrew into the heart, bringing cold to the body, as "reflected in pallor or swooning . . . unconsciousness or even death" (91-92). Saunders proceeds to discuss the medically accurate depictions of lovesickness evidenced by death-like swoons in the "Roman de la Rose," the "Parliament of Fouls," several Middle English romances, and especially "Troilus and Criseyde" (93-96). Most relevant to the discussion on Gower, the retreat of spirits might result in a death-like state from which the patient could be revived by a skilled physician. As examples, Saunders discusses the restoration of a seemingly dead lady in Marie de France's "Eliduc," the ancient novel "Apollonius," and Gower's "Tale of Apollonius." In educated medical detail, Gower describes how the physician Cerymon restored the latent spark of life by remedies including the warming of the lady's breast, causing her heart to "flacke and bete" (VIII.1195; qtd. p. 99). To conclude her study, Saunders discusses how the bodily spirits mediated intense religious or visionary experience, e.g., in Richard Rolle's "Incendium Amoris," the Middle English "Pearl," and the "Book of Margery Kempe," with bodily expression that included the swoon (100-05). [LBB. Copyright. John Gower Society. eJGN 43.2] Author/Editor Author/Editor Saunders, Corinne. Published Saunders, Corinne. "From Romance to Vision: The Life of Breath in Medieval Literary Texts." In David Fuller, Corinne Saunders, and Jane McNaughton, eds. The Life of Breath in Literature, Culture and Medicine: Classical to Contemporary (Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan, 2021), pp. 87-109. Gower Subject Confessio Amantis Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource From Romance to Vision: The Life of Breath in Medieval Literary Texts. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2021 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review Dauby seeks to "approach the art of Chaucer and Gower by comparing their adaptations of some textual points of [Nicholas] Trevet," from the "Man of Laws' Tale" and "The Tale of Florent," leaving aside "the question of factual differences or the . . . possible influence of one poet on the other" (80). Her focus is on proper names and titles; her conclusion is that "Gower follows Trevet faithfully…even to the point of monotony. Chaucer, on the contrary, does not hesitate to intervene and comment on both the story and the craft of narration" (83). She supports this with five pages of three-columned, comparative charts with examples from Trevet on the left, Chaucer in the middle, and Gower on the right (83-88). [RFY. Copyright. The John Gower Society eJGN 40.1] Author/Editor Author/Editor Dauby, Hélène. Published Dauby, Hélène. "From Trevet to Gower and Chaucer." Anglophonia: French Journal of English Studies 29 (2011): 79-88. Gower Subject Confessio Amantis Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource From Trevet to Gower and Chaucer. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2011 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review Stone proposes "to offer a history of the histories of Alexander, the classical texts that were interpolated, redacted, and translated by scholars from the twelfth to the seventeenth century and that account for our modern dichotomous conception of Alexander as a disturbingly violent tyrant or a political visionary who established a harmonious, multicultural empire" (2). The Middle Ages knew Alexander in two versions: as a decadent, corrupt pagan tyrant who deserved poisoning, or as a political idealist who sought to "defeat and unite disparate cultures under the yoke of political and philosophical idealism" (5). The first position is that of Pompeius Trogus, and later of Orosius; the second was spread initially by Diodorus Siculus, Arrian, Quintus Curtius, Plutarch, and Justin in the Roman world, and subsequently, combined with folk Eastern elements, through romances. Chapter 5 (141-63) is devoted to "'Moral' Gower and the Rejection of Alexander." Stone sets Gower firmly in the former camp: "By the end of his career Gower possessed an extensive knowledge of the various traditions of Alexander literature in circulation and clearly rejected Alexander as one of history's imitable models of kingship" (141). Gower's Alexander emerges gradually but steadily over the course of his oeuvre as "an extended moral warning on kingship" (142). Stone traces this progress through the "Mirour de l'Omme" (Alexander is undone by Fortune, and his empire by the greed and treachery of his successors); the "Vox Clamantis" (Gower as Aristotle to Richard II/Alexander, arguing in Senecan fashion that "the fall of a man is due in part to his own faults and errors, not merely the machinations wrought by Fortune" [144], and--like Aristotle--failing to be heard); the "Confessio Amantis" (writing to advise both Richard and Henry IV, Gower "effectively graduates from echoing . . . Seneca and Cicero . . . to the manner of Augustine and Orosius" [157-58], and holds up Alexander's insatiable appetite for conquest, "for waging perpetual warfare and disturbing world peace . . . a clear condemnation of war," as his undoing); and "In Praise of Peace" ("clearly marks the culmination of Gower's development of a singular, definitive reception of Alexander, as he condemns more explicitly than at any point in his writings the ancient ruler's inability to restrain his will and mad desire for conquest") (159). [RFY. Copyright. The John Gower Society. eJGN 41.1] Author/Editor Author/Editor Stone, Charles Russell. Published Stone, Charles Russell. From Tyrant to Philosopher-King: A Literary History of Alexander the Great in Medieval and Early Modern England. Turnhout: Brepols, 2013. 254 pp. Gower Subject Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations Mirour de l'Omme (Speculum Meditatntis Vox Clamantis Confessio Amantis In Praise of Peace Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource From Tyrant to Philosopher-King: A Literary History of Alexander the Great in Medieval and Early Modern England. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2013 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Published Dauphant, Clotilde. "Frontières d'un genre aux frontières d'une langue: ballades typiques et atypiques d'Eustache Deschamps, John Gower et Geoffrey Chaucer. In Le Rayonnement de la cour des premiers Valois à époque d'Eustache Deschamps. Ed. Miren Lacassagne. Paris: Presses de l'Université Paris-Sorbonne, 2017. Pp. 81-94. Gower Subject Cinkante Balades Traitié pour Essampler les Amantz Marietz Style, Rhetoric, and Versification Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations Author/Editor Author/Editor Dauphant, Clotilde. Review Each of the defining features of the ballade--the number of stanzas, the use of the refrain, the presence of an envoy, the patterns of rhyme--was in fact subject to variation, Dauphant points out. Deschamps, in his "Art de dictier," helped fix the form as it was practiced towards the end of the 14th century, while also, there and in his own practice, encouraging the new breadth of subject matter and the development of a "style personnel" by taking advantage of the "élasticité" of the form (82). Gower figures prominently among her examples. His "Cinkante Balades" are notable first of all for their "pauvreté formelle" (85), all in decasyllables, with only two stanza forms, one of seven lines, one of eight. She finds further evidence of conscious formal planning in the choice to include exactly 50 ballades (not counting the ninth, which is instead a five-stanza "chanson royale," or the final unnumbered poem) and in a pattern of 5's and 3's that is based, however, on Dauphant's misapprehension that the two "dedicatory ballades" that precede the collection are also five-stanza "chanson royales" (85-86) (one has three stanzas, the other four). One "irrégularité" that she finds "involontaire," and by that she means unconscious on Gower's part, has to do with his lack of concern for the difference between masculine and feminine rhymes, rhyming "Pantasilée" with "couché," for instance, and having an unusually large number of ballades with exclusively masculine rhymes, contrary to Deschamps' advice and to the preference of most other poets to mix masculine and feminine rhymes in the same stanza. Other "irregularities" in both Gower and Chaucer she attributes to a "choix esthétique réflechi," a deliberate aesthetic choice (87). Ballades 13, 14, 16, and 17, for instance, all lack a refrain. By grouping them together, they create a counter-pattern that has the effect of drawing greater attention to the refrain of 15, which in context stands out as the exception. And unlike 15, these four are all concerned with the narrator's suffering in love. The absence of a refrain may itself be expressive of that which he lacks. Beginning with Deschamps, there was also considerable variation in the use of the envoy, some of which Dauphant describes, including Chaucer in her discussion, but her only comment on Gower, apart from the fact that he uses the envoy on all but one of his ballades, is that his choice of rhymes--"bcbc"--echoes the last four lines of his 8-line stanza but not of the 7-line stanza, which ends in a couplet. But she does suggest that Gower is inspired by the envoy's function to attach a final stanza--an "envoy" to the collection as a whole at the conclusion of both the CB and his "Traitié pour essampler les amantz marietz." [PN. Copyright. The John Gower Society. eJGN 39.2] Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Frontières d'un genre aux frontières d'une langue: ballades typiques et atypiques d'Eustache Deschamps, John Gower et Geoffrey Chaucer. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2017 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Author/Editor Author/Editor Bratcher, James T. Published Bratcher, James T.. "Function of the Jeweled Bridle in Gower's 'Tale of Rosiphelee'." Chaucer Review 40 (2005), pp. 107-110. ISSN 0009-2002 Gower Subject Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations Confessio Amantis Review Bratcher contrasts Gower's "Rosiphelee to the 13th-century French "Lai du Trot," which, he asserts, despite the many differences, "in some form . . . must have contributed" to Gower's tale, for these are the only two known versions of the medieval "purgatory of cruel beauties" in which a lone woman is punished for her neglect of love. The differences between the two reflect Gower's "deliberate reworking" of the earlier tale. The most significant of these is the attribution to the woman in the vision of a richly decorated bridle as a token of her (unhappily too tardy) submission to love. The introduction of the horse's headgear makes possible a pun on the ME word for bridle (< OE brīdel) and that for bridal (< "bride-ale," the custom of drinking in celebration of a wedding) in the woman's admonition to the heroine, "To godd, ma Dame, I you betake, / And warneth alle for mi sake,/ Of love that thei ben noght ydel, / And bidd hem thenke upon mi brydel" (CA 4.1431-34). The pun, judging from the citations in both OED and MED, appears to be completely plausible, though the spelling of the two words remains distinct and Gower nowhere else uses "bridale" in the marital sense (but cf. the "Cook's Tale," CT I.4375). As far as I can tell, it has gone unnoticed, and it is more significant than Bratcher realizes, for however subtle, it introduces the only allusion in the tale to marriage as the goal of one's submission to love (Bratcher's summary is incorrect in this regard), and it thus anticipates Genius' counsel, in the passage that immediately follows, that "thilke love is wel at ese, / Which set is upon mariage" (4.1476-77). As Bratcher notes, a complete edition of the "Lai du Trot" by Glyn S. Burgess and Leslie C. Brook is available at http://www.liv.ac.uk/sml/los/narrativelays.pdf. [PN. Copyright. The John Gower Society. JGN 25.1]. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Function of the Jeweled Bridle in Gower's 'Tale of Rosiphelee' Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Penn State University Press, Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2005 Type The nature or genre of the resource Article PeerReviewed Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review Argues that the conclusion of CA, in which Amans discovers that he is too old for Venus' service, derives much of its force from the contrast to the energetic allegorical consummation at the conclusion of RR, and thus should be seen at least in part as Gower's answer to Jean de Meun. Where Genius, in RR, urges Love's barons on by crying "Plow, for God's sake, my barons, plow," Gower's Venus reminds Amans that "mor behoveth to the plowh" than just his will alone; and instead of plucking the rose, as in RR, Amans discovers that Cupid plucks the arrow from his heart. Dean also examines Gower's use of the conventions and language of French courtly poetry, and shows how they are consistently subverted, sometimes ludicrously, by more colloquial Anglicisms and by the reality of Amans' condition. Gower has "modernized" Jean de Meun's conclusion in his poem. The result of his mixture of humor and pathos in these scenes is a "comedy more fitting for reflection than for unqualified mirth" (p. 34), and suggests an important statement on the human condition in both its comic and its tragic aspects. [PN. Copyright The John Gower Society. JGN 9.2] Author/Editor Author/Editor Dean, James Published Dean, James. "Gather Ye Rosebuds: Gower's Comic Reply to Jean de Meun." In John Gower: Recent Readings. Papers Presented at the Meetings of the John Gower Society at the International Congress on Medieval Studies, Western Michigan University, 1983-88. Ed. Yeager, R.F.. Studies in Medfieval Culture (26). Kalamazoo, MI: Western Michigan University, 1989, pp. 21-37. Gower Subject Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations Confessio Amantis Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gather Ye Rosebuds: Gower's Comic Reply to Jean de Meun Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Western Michigan University, Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1989 Type The nature or genre of the resource Book Section PeerReviewed Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review Discusses Gower's treatment of his female characters, focusing on three tales: "Canace and Machaire," in which, Watt argues, contrary to most published commentary, the children are held responsible for their incestuous relationship and, at least at the beginning, the blame is equally shared between them; "Iphis and Iante," in which the two girls suffer no blame for their desire for one another or for Iphis's cross-dressing before Iphis is transformed into a man; and "Calistona," in which Gower's alterations subtly transform the rape into a seduction for which the woman herself can be held at least in part responsible. Watt reaches two important conclusions: one, "going against the tide of recent gender criticism," as she herself proclaims, that Gower's main concern is ethical, and that "when a writer like Gower writes about women or men, about homosexual or heterosexual desires, or about transvestism or transsexuality, he (or she) is not necessarily discussing something else" (211). And second (echoing an argument also recently made by Ellen Shaw Bakalian), that "the central ethical message of the Confessio Amantis as a whole is that the responsibility for sin or error falls firmly on the individual who commits it, male or female" (213). [PN. Copyright. The John Gower Society. JGN 24.1] Author/Editor Author/Editor Watt, Diane Published Watt, Diane. "Gender and Sexuality in 'Confessio Amantis'." In A Companion to Gower. Ed. Echard, Siân. Cambridge: Brewer, 2004, pp. 197-213. Gower Subject Confessio Amantis Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gender and Sexuality in 'Confessio Amantis' Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Brewer, Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2004 Type The nature or genre of the resource Book Section PeerReviewed Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review Bullón-Fernández describes the syllabi of two courses, the one a senior-level course (which she has already offered) on medieval sexualities; the other a junior-level course (which she has planned) on family ties in medieval literature. Neither course focuses exclusively on Gower, but tales from the "Confessio Amantis" are prominent in each. The first course emphasizes theory. A unit on sex and gender opens with readings from Toril Moi and Judith Butler, and examines Gower's tales of the False Bachelor, Eneas and Dido, Ulysses and Penelope, and Florent, as well as Chaucer's Wife of Bath's Prologue and Tale. The second unit, on heterosexual desires, is divided into three sections: virginity, sex and marriage, and heterosexual perversions (i.e., rape and incest). Readings in this part of the course include works by Gayle Rubin, Butler again, and Ruth Mazo Karras, and the literature features tales by Gower and Chaucer, many of them parallel stories (some now drawn from Chaucer's "Legend of Good Women"). The third unit focuses on homosexual desires. Readings in theory are taken from Butler, Michel Foucault, and Carla Freccero, and literary texts include Heldris de Cornuälle's "Roman de Silence" and materials from the case of John Rykener, a male transvestite prostitute in fourteenth-century London, as well as Chaucer's Miller's Tale and Gower's tales of Iphis and Achilles in Book 4 of the "Confessio." The proposed 300-level course, on Family Ties in Medieval Literature, does not emphasize readings in theory, but does take a (new) historical and anthropological approach to the subject and still includes extensive background reading. Again, Gower and Chaucer are the dominant literary figures studied. The course has units on husbands and wives, parents and children, and siblings, and a fourth one called "beyond the biological family" (e.g., sworn brotherhood). Gower is represented in the first unit by his "Traitié pour essampler les amantz marietz" and the tales of Florent and Ceix and Alceone, the second, on parents and children, by his tales of Apollonius, Constance, Virginia, Achilles, and Orestes, the third, on siblings, by stories of Canace and Machaire, and Tereus, Philomene, and Progne. The last unit, on sworn brotherhood, features "Amis and Amiloun." All of these units are enriched by the comparisons with others, not only Chaucer, but also writers such as Chretien de Troyes. [Kurt Olsson. Copyright. The John Gower Society. JGN 31.1] Author/Editor Author/Editor Bullón-Fernández, María Published Bullón-Fernández, María. "Gender, Sexuality, and Family Ties in the 'Confessio Amantis'." In Approaches to Teaching the Poetry of John Gower. Ed. Yeager, R. F., and Gastle, Brian W. New York: Modern Language Association of America, 2011, pp. 119-26. ISBN 9781603290999 Gower Subject Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations Traitié pour Essampler les Amants Marietz Confessio Amantis Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gender, Sexuality, and Family Ties in the 'Confessio Amantis' Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Modern Language Association of America, Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2011 Type The nature or genre of the resource Book Section PeerReviewed Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review The Northwood family, prominent landholders in east Kent, may have been related to Gower through the female line. The article as its title suggests lays out the generational family, as presented in London, British Library MS Additional 75889, a chronicle roll related to the manor of Thurnham, in Kent. The roll covers the period early to late 1380s, when it was transcribed. [RFY. Copyright. John Gower Society. eJGN 44.1] Author/Editor Author/Editor L. B. L. [Lambert B. Larking]. Published L. B. L. [Lambert B. Larking]. "Genealogical Notices of the Northwoods." Archaeologia Cantiana 2 (1859): 9-42. Gower Subject Biography of Gower Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Genealogical Notices of the Northwoods. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1859 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Author/Editor Author/Editor Grady, Frank Published Grady, Frank. "Generation of 1399." In The Letter of the Law: Legal Practice and Literary Production in Medieval England. Ed. Steiner, Emily and Barrington, Candace. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2002, pp. 202-229. Gower Subject Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations Cronica Tripertita Review Grady uses three main works – Gower's "Cronica Tripertita," "Richard the Redeless," and "Mum and the Sothsegger"--to define a "Lancastrian poetic," the shared thematic concerns and formal traits that unite the first generation of texts to appear after Henry's ascension of the throne. He gives his greatest attention to "Mum and the Sothsegger," the most problematic of these texts since it appeared a bit later in Henry's reign and thus has to deal with more of the consequences of the change of regime and since it takes a somewhat more skeptical view of the usurpation and its aftermath. He uses Gower's poem, along with "Richard the Redeless," to identify two important formal characteristics of this group of texts: first, the abandonment of the dream vision as a way of engaging with contemporary events, despite the importance of the dream in the predecessors to these texts, particularly "Piers Plowman" and VC; and second, "the concomitant increase of interest in documentary models of discourse, particularly legal texts and representations of parliamentary activity" (206). In place of the "authorizing immediacy" (210) of the claim to have witnessed the events of the poem that is allowed by the dream vision, Grady notes that in the Cronica, Gower adopts the analogous procedure of pretending that each of the three sections is "composed contemporaneously with the events that it describes" (209), though all are quite surely written after the fact. (It is not crucial to his argument, but Grady refers to CA as if it too is in dream-vision form, though it is not.) And as part of the turn to the stability and "apparent fixity" of "documents, chronicles, and statutes" (222) that characterized the response to the legal uncertainties and instabilities of the time, Grady notes that the Cronica "is largely organized by its references to parliamentary activity" and that the poet "is clearly concerned with the legality of each proceeding" (223). [PN. Copyright. The John Gower Society. JGN 22.2.] Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Generation of 1399 Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Cornell University Press, Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2002 Type The nature or genre of the resource Book Section PeerReviewed Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review Addresses the question of humor in CA in a rather different fashion by examining Gower's references to smiling and to laughter. She discerns three different attitudes towards laugher in medieval writing: the first two, which she labels "ascetic hostility" and "reluctant tolerance" (p. 42), are those discussed by Curtius and Kolve. But the third attitude, "which unreservedly affirms the inherent dignity of laughter" (p. 43), has equally venerable roots, she claims, and is the one that is more characteristic of Gower. She finds evidence for this attitude in the condemnation of joylessness that frequently occurs in medieval descriptions of Envy, and more positively, in the inclusion of laughter among man's natural endowments, for which she quotes Vincent of Beauvais. Both the negative and positive aspects of "natural" laughter are reflected in CA. She also finds examples in which laughter is ironic in effect, and examples in which laughter represents a rational corrective of sinful behavior. The latter are marked by a compassion and empathy that mark CA as a whole, and Burke's account of Gower's view of laughter generally supports her characterization of him as a man who could share a joke with his friend Chaucer. [PN. Copyright The John Gower Society. PGN 9.2] Author/Editor Author/Editor Burke, Linda Barney Published Burke, Linda Barney. "Genial Gower: Laughter in the Confessio Amantis." In John Gower: Recent Readings. Papers Presented at the Meetings of the John Gower Society at the International Congress on Medieval Studies, Western Michigan University, 1983-88. Ed. Yeager, R.F.. Studies in Medieval Culture (26). Kalamazoo, MI: Western Michigan University, 1989, pp. 39-63. Gower Subject Confessio Amantis Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Genial Gower: Laughter in the Confessio Amantis Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Western Michigan University, Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1989 Type The nature or genre of the resource Book Section PeerReviewed Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review CA "is a highly complex poem," Wetherbee asserts, "though it employs a minimum of overt artistry." The spareness of its style, of its treatment of narrative, and of its diction has made critics "take for granted the impeccable orthodoxy of Gower's artistic intentions"; and the hierarchical orderliness implied by its structure has been taken as expressive of the "essential character" of the poem. The bulk of CA, however, consists of tales, "complex in themselves, and made still more so by the complexity of their interrelation. All are ostensibly illustrations of the poem's moral argument, but . . . few make their points in a straightforward way" (pp. 241-42). Some of their complexity derives from the "dual perspective" that characterizes Genius: servant to Venus, he also bears traces of the priest of Nature of Alain de Lille, and he is able to "see his subservience to Venus in relation to a prelapsarian model of human behavior." Thus the morals of the tales often serve only as a foil to "Genius' intuitively more sympathetic reponse the the story he is telling," yet Genius is also "intuitively aware that the failings for which he shows such tolerance reflect an underlying failure of reason, will, and vision; and this, though he does not recognize it as such, is a result of the Fall, a measure of man's alienation from a once harmonious relationship with nature and with his fellow humans" (pp. 243-44). Wetherbee illustrates the complexity of the moral argument of the poem with a detailed analysis of the tales in Book 1. He provides several examples in which the circumstances of the tale either subvert, or nullify, or broaden, the intended moral, often because of the changes that Gower has introduced in retelling it. In other cases, it is the details that Gower omits that provide the best evidence of the inadequacy of Genius' moralization. Many of these tales, he observes, are concerned with a man's encounter with a woman, and in many of these, Genius' sympathy for the male character governs his morality and results in the obliteration or obscuring of the moral situation of the woman. Wetherbee goes on to suggest that "male misperceptions of the feminine, and the moral and psychological problems they dramatize, are the unifying element in Book I of the Confessio, Gower's way of focusing his treatment of the sin of pride" (p. 255). Only in the final tale of the "Three Questions" is the woman given an "unambiguously positive role," and while "the story and its explicit moralitas are still imperfectly united, as in the earlier tales, . . . here at last they are in sympathy" (p. 260). [PN. Copyright The John Gower Society. JGN 9.1] Author/Editor Author/Editor Wetherbee, Winthrop Published Wetherbee, Winthrop. "Genius and Interpretation in the 'Confessio Amantis'." In Magister Regis: Studies in Honor of Robert Earl Kaske. Ed. Groos, Arthur. New York: Fordham University Press, 1986, pp. 241-260. ISBN 0823211614 Gower Subject Confessio Amantis Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Genius and Interpretation in the 'Confessio Amantis'. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Fordham University Press, Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1986 Type The nature or genre of the resource Book Section PeerReviewed Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review Argues that Alanus de Insulis's figure of Genius in "De Planctu" is the source for the figure in the "Roman de la Rose," "Confessio Amantis," and "Faerie Queene," and that the development of Genius is intimately related to the development of the figure of Natura. [RFY1981]. Author/Editor Author/Editor Brumble, Herbert David, III. Published Brumble, Herbert David, III. Genius and Other Related Allegorical Figures in the "De Planctu Naturae," the "Roman de la Rose," the "Confessio Amantis," and the "Faerie Queene." Ph.D. Dissertation. University of Nebraska, 1970. Gower Subject Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations Confessio Amantis Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Genius and Other Related Allegorical Figures in the "De Planctu Naturae," the "Roman de la Rose," the "Confessio Amantis," and the "Faerie Queene." Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1970 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Author/Editor Author/Editor Irvin, Matthew Published Irvin, Matthew. "Genius and Sensual Reading in the Vox Clamantis." In John Gower, Trilingual Poet: Language, Translation, and Tradition. Ed. Dutton, Elisabeth, and Hines, John, and Yeager, R.F. Cambridge: Brewer, 2010, pp. 196-205. Gower Subject Vox Clamantis Confessio Amantis Review Although the figure of Genius in the Confessio Amantis is far better known, Gower gave him a cameo in the earlier Vox Clamantis IV, 13-14. Irvin reads the former to illuminate the latter, and vice-versa. Noting that "while the ecclesiastical nature of his role in the Confessio is contestable, in the Vox [Genius] clearly functions as not only a confessor but also a bishop and a scholar of theology," and thereby stands in for the Church proper--"the real target for [Gower's] critique." In both poems, Gower uses Genius to "show how the sensual (feminine) pleasures of reading can subvert the supposedly prudential forms of masculine, institutional interpretation" (196) "Reading Genius's persona in the Confessio with his brief appearance in the Vox," Irvin argues, "can begin to illustrate Gower's larger poetic and political goals. Both texts encourage not the exclusion of love and sex, but the inclusion of them within a larger political and institutional discourse, and the necessity for a "prudens" to experience their possibilities in order to properly act morally and politically" (205). [RFY. Copyright. The John Gower Society. JGN 30.1] Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Genius and Sensual Reading in the Vox Clamantis Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Brewer, Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2010 Type The nature or genre of the resource Book Section PeerReviewed Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review Farber presents a defense of "a method of reading that explicitly guides the reader towards the ethical and didactic content of the text" (144), as opposed to "allegorical reading," which in the interpretation of the "Confessio Amantis" has (in the examples she cites, most from the 1970s and none later than 1992) placed more emphasis on what is not present in Gower's text at the expense of what is, and has been used to diminish or undermine Genius' authority as moral instructor. Following Minnis and others, she examines the background for the practice of "ethical reading" in the "accessus ad auctores," demonstrating that "a long tradition of allegorical interpretations [of a particular text] . . . does not rule out the possibility of using the text for other purposes" (146). Such purposes are evident, she maintains, in Gower's tales of "Phebus and Daphne" and "Ceyx and Alceone." In each, she notes, "the moral Genius provides is not a normative prescription. He is not giving Amans strict rules to follow, but rather, offering him exemplary scenarios that highlight specific ethical issues. If Amans is going to find relief from his love, he must learn to read his own situation in terms of its broader ethical implications" (148). In that way, the poem enacts the "very process of reading" that Gower expects from his reader as well (151). [Copyright. The John Gower Society. JGN 32.1] Author/Editor Author/Editor Farber, Annika Published Farber, Annika. "Genius and the Practice of Ethical Reading." ES: Revista de Filología Inglesa 33.1 (2012), pp. 137-53. ISSN 0210-9689 Gower Subject Confessio Amantis Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Genius and the Practice of Ethical Reading Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2012 Type The nature or genre of the resource Article PeerReviewed Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review This brief article is a sequel to Knowlton's 1920 piece "The Allegorical Figure of Genius," published in "Classical Philology." In the sequel, Knowlton focuses on the characterization of Genius after the composition of the "De Planctu Naturae" by Alan of Lille. Knowlton argues that after "his establishment on a lofty plane by Alan of Lille, Genius steadily altered for the worse, either in power or in morality" (95). In Jean de Meun, Genius is already portrayed more cynically, although he retains his respectable authority. Gower, afterwards, "brought him back to sober consideration by associating him directly with human beings, and accordingly deprived him of the majestic aloofness of Alan's excommunicator; still, he did not leave him as Jean's half-grotesque, vigorous demigod" (89). Knowlton further points out that Gower's Genius acts inconsistently. While Genius professes to know little except Venus's service, he provides an extensive account of knowledge in Book 7 of the CA. He also denies the divinity of Venus in Book 5. After this short exposition of Gower's Genius, Knowlton investigates the late medieval French reception of Genius, with a particular focus on Jean Lemaire and Clément Marot. [CvD] Author/Editor Author/Editor Knowlton, E. C Published Knowlton, E. C. "Genius as an Allegorical Figure." Modern Language Notes 39.2 (1924), pp. 89-95. Gower Subject Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations Confessio Amantis Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Genius as an Allegorical Figure. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1924 Type The nature or genre of the resource Article PeerReviewed Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review Considers the complexity of structure of the CA. Simpson begins with Gower's frequent use of "enformacioun" and the related verb "enforme," which, he suggests, have more than the neutral modern sense, suggesting not just a body of knowledge but also its active effect upon the recipient, senses related to medieval philosophical ideas of "form." Imitating God's "forming" the elements and the soul of man according to a divine exemplar, the instruction in the poem will bring Amans' soul to self-knowledge and to its ideal "form." In Simpson's account, however, the process of instruction is not direct, but proceeds by way of the particular "form" of the poem, in which Genius is one participant in a dialogue among different faculties, representing the imagination or ingenium that mediates between will and reason. As such, he too is in need of "enformacioun," as he grows, during the course of the dialogue, into his proper function. Simpson surveys some familiar material here. He re-examines Genius' ancestry to demonstrate his width of sympathies, from rational to irrational; and he uses Book 3, one of the most problematic for Genius' role, as the source of examples for his analysis. At the beginning of the book, Genius' moral authority is questionable, as he seems to think rather like Pandarus, more interested in success in love than with rational control of sexual appetite. By the end of the book, however, under the prompting of Amans' questions, he moves towards conformity with reason, and shows through his tales "that personal ethics cannot be grounded on natural law alone; instead, the formation of a personal ethics demands a placing of the self within the human constraints which govern relationships in society more broadly. An ethics, that is, demands a politics" (p. 183). This is the central thematic message of the poem, according to Simpson; and the stories in the poem "are not only about the control of the will by reason, but they effect that very control in their listener Amans" (p. 185), as "Gower represents the naturally regenerative powers of the soul interacting with each other, bringing the will back into its proper mediation with, or conformity with the reason" (p. 187). [PN. Copyright The John Gower Society. JGN 13.1] Author/Editor Author/Editor Simpson, James Published Simpson, James. "Genius's 'Enformacioun' in Book III of the Confessio Amantis." Mediaevalia 16 (1993), pp. 159-195. Gower Subject Language and Word Studies Confessio Amantis Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Genius's 'Enformacioun' in Book III of the Confessio Amantis Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1993 Type The nature or genre of the resource Article PeerReviewed Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Author/Editor Author/Editor Chute Marchette. Published Chute Marchette. Geoffrey Chaucer of England. New York: Dutton, 1946, pp. 82, 83, 129, 145, 193, 199, 200, 204, 205, 207, 234, 235, 241, 245, 249, 271, 272, 291, 316. Gower Subject Backgrounds and General Criticism Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations Review Chaucer and Gower relations were friendly and close; Chaucer knew Gower's work, which is generally more moral than Chaucer's; the whole of CA is a compliment to Chaucer, because it was written in English. Gower was a social critic in MO and VC. [RFY1981] Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Geoffrey Chaucer of England. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1946 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Published Howard, Edwin J. Geoffrey Chaucer. New York: Twayne, 1964, pp. 46, 76, 99, 107, 136, 191, 194, 197. Gower Subject Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations Style, Rhetoric, and Versification Review Gower was friendly with Chaucer; Gower's tale of Medea is better than "Legend of Good Women; draws on the "Roman de la Rose," as does Chaucer; alludes to Gower's use of "smooth" language. [RFY1981] Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Geoffrey Chaucer. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1964 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review Gower was a friend of Chaucer. CA is a poem similar to "The Canterbury Tales." [RFY1981] Author/Editor Author/Editor Legouis, Emile. Lailavoix, L., trans. Published Legouis, Emile. Geoffrey Chaucer. Translated by L. Lailavoix. London: Dent, 1913. Reprinted 1928, pp. 4, 5n, 9, 18, 33, 45, 141, 142, 147, 159. Originally published in French, Geoffroy Chaucer. Paris: Bloud, 1910. Gower Subject Backgrounds and General Criticism Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Geoffrey Chaucer. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1913 1910 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review Gowerians need no introduction to G. C, Macaulay's four-volume edition of Gower's works, but most know little about the man who produced it. Edwards remedies this to the extent possible by combining an account of Macaulay's academic and scholarly life with appreciative commentary on the "character and intellect" that his edition reveals and the "motive and method" (248) that underlie it, particularly the two volumes dedicated to the "Confessio Amantis." Edwards expresses justified chagrin that, despite the wide range and importance of Macaulay's accomplishments (detailed by Edwards), his death was "marked by a single obituary" and he "does not appear in either the "Dictionary of National Biography" or the "Oxford Dictionary of National Biography" (247). Extensive sleuthing enables Edwards to compile a brisk narrative of Macaulay's family, education, teaching, and scholarly activities, all of it punctuated by noteworthy, sometimes surprising, information. Turning to Macaulay's Gower edition, Edwards makes clear that, although Macaulay discovered the unique manuscript of "Mirour de l'Omme," it was editing the CA that was his driving interest. Edwards focuses on the nature and significant challenges of editing the work, commending Macaulay's location and descriptions of manuscripts of CA--his "remarkable feat of enumerative bibliography"--and the importance of his understanding "that a description of a manuscript in an edition serves a different purpose from a catalogue description" (254). Although Macaulay uses the term "recensions" (Edwards clarifies as "broad textual groupings," 255) in categorizing the forty-two CA manuscripts that he identified, some of his remarks seem to presage, Edwards suggests, more recent arguments about the "limitations of recension as an editorial method" (258). Even though his collations are not exhaustive, Macaulay was an accurate transcriber; he was a "conservative editor," but his edition "is not a critical edition as the term is now generally understood" (259). Edwards identifies and helpfully corrects misunderstandings by scholars of Macaulay's claims, while clarifying that the "textual authority" of the edition "has remained largely unchallenged" (260). This section of the essay is uncharacteristically bumpy, perhaps due to a light editorial hand or hasty revision. For example, footnotes 37 and 43 are confused (in reversed ibid order), and Peter Nicholson is referred to five times in three pages (257-59) by first name and surname as if previously unmentioned--reprimanded for misrepresenting Macaulay and then praised as the "most astute of Gower's textual critics" (257) and "one of the most searching of Macaulay's critics" (259). Edwards closes on an upbeat, identifying two positive reviews from 1901 and 1902 of Macaulay's edition, "previously unremarked by Gower scholarship" (260), both by the poet and literary critic Edward Thomas. [MA. Copyright. The John Gower Society. eJGN 39.2] Author/Editor Author/Editor Edwards, A. S. G. Published Edwards, A. S. G. "George Campbell Macaulay and the Clarendon Edition of Gower." In Martha Driver, Derek Pearsall, and R. F. Yeager, eds. John Gower in Manuscripts and Early Printed Books. Publications of the John Gower Society, no. 14. Rochester, NY: Brewer, 2020. Pp. 247-61. Gower Subject Facsimiles, Editions, and Translations Manuscripts and Textual Studies Confessio Amantis Mirour de l'Omme (Speculum Meditantis) Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource George Campbell Macaulay and the Clarendon Edition of Gower. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2020 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review Gower was moral and pedantic; CA was based on the "Roman de la Rose." [RFY1981] Author/Editor Author/Editor Gätschenberger, S. Published Gätschenberger, S. Geschichte der englischen dichtkunst nebst einer skizze der wissenschaftlichen Literatur England's. London: Wohlauer, 1874, p. 29 Gower Subject Backgrounds and General Criticism Confessio Amantis Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Geschichte der englischen dichtkunst nebst einer skizze der wissenschaftlichen Literatur England's. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1874 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review Brief, readable outline of Gower's life and writings. [RFY1981] Author/Editor Author/Editor Schirmer, Walter F. Published Schirmer, Walter F. Geschichte der englischen Literatur von den Anfang bis zur Gegenwart. Halle/Salle: Niemeyer, 1937, pp. 144-47, 148, 152, 165, 176, 605. Gower Subject Backgrounds and General Criticism Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Geschichte der englischen Literatur von den Anfang bis zur Gegenwart. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1937 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review Brief biography; assessment of works as political and religious criticism; picture of tomb effigy, p. 144. [RFY1981] Author/Editor Author/Editor Wülker, Richard. Published Wülker, Richard. Geschichte der enlischen Literatur, von den altesten Zeiten bis zur Gegenwart. 2 vols. Leipzig and Vienna: Bibliographical Institute, 1906, pp. 100, 143-46, 150, 152, 156, 174, 179, 197, 201, 223, 255. Gower Subject Backgrounds and General Criticism Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Geschichte der enlischen Literatur, von den altesten Zeiten bis zur Gegenwart. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1906 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review Unexamined [RFY1981] Author/Editor Author/Editor Siegmund-Schultze, Dorothea. Published Siegmund-Schultze, Dorothea. "Gesellschaftwissenschaftsliche Beitrage zu John Gower." Ph.D. Dissertation. Leipzig University, 1952. Gower Subject Backgrounds and General Criticism Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gesellschaftwissenschaftsliche Beitrage zu John Gower. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1952 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review Van Dijk argues that, in their respective wrestlings with "the question of sovereignty, whether the king . . . is 'legibus solutes,' or free from the law," Gower and Langland "despite their ostensible ideological differences . . . share a legal and political reference field that needs further study, and that discloses some surprising similarities" (310). He concludes that "the definition of equity that lies behind "Piers" and the CA is Ulpian's maxim that justice gives to each his due or law. The primary terms that describe this principle, as Gower and Langland interpret it, are consistency, uniformity, and reciprocity. As a result . . . equity is not to be associated strictly with the prerogative courts, but encapsulates instead the correct way to administer the law. Equitable justice is fair, and that is why it can sometimes seem fearful. Lastly, whereas justice is in theory strictly separate from the law, in practice the two are frequently conflated" (333-34). More specifically, "for Langland, this means that there is not a fundamental difference between Reason's call for the enforcement of the rigor of the law and the virtue of Justice in the later passus . . . . In the Mirour, Gower similarly associates equity with the scales of justice. The main point about equity, then, is that it considers all to be equal before the law and gives each his due reward or punishment . . . . In Gower's [CA] Book 7, the exposition of Pity entails that even the king's mercy must be without favor and follow the strictures of law and justice . . . . In nearly every instance the hope is that, if the proper administration of the law is hampered in any way, then the king might correct the problem so that the law can once more be applied justly to all who are subject to it" (334). [RFY. Copyright. The John Gower Society. JGN 28.2] Author/Editor Author/Editor Van Dijk, Conrad Published Van Dijk, Conrad. "Giving Each His Due: Langland, Gower, and the Question of Equity." Journal of English and Germanic Philology 108 (2009), pp. 310-315. Gower Subject Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations Confessio Amantis Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Giving Each His Due: Langland, Gower, and the Question of Equity Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2009 Type The nature or genre of the resource Article PeerReviewed Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review Lists and quotes MO 17336-17340 and CA 4, 2224-29 and 4, 2269-77 among sixty-eight literary examples of expressions of natural (as opposed to hereditary) nobility, gentility, or gentilesse. [MA] Author/Editor Author/Editor Vogt, George McGill. Published Vogt, George McGill. "Gleanings for the History of a Sentiment: Generositas Virtus, Non Sanguis." Journal of English and Germanic Philology 24 (1925): 102-24. Gower Subject Backgrounds and General Criticism Language and Word Studies Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gleanings for the History of a Sentiment: Generositas Virtus, Non Sanguis. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1925 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review Coleman examines Gower's use of images in his works, asserting that he likely designed them himself. She focuses specifically on the famous archer illustration from the beginning of "Vox Clamantis," suggesting Gower engages a number of fourteenth-century motifs to underscore the arguments he presents in the text of VC. [JGS. Copyright. The John Gower Society. eJGN 39.2] Author/Editor Author/Editor Coleman, Joyce. Published Coleman, Joyce. "Global Gower: The Archer Aiming at the World." Accessus 5.2 (2019): n.p. Gower Subject Vox Clamantis Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Global Gower: The Archer Aiming at the World. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2019 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review Echard adds another valuable chapter to her on-going series of studies of the MSS of CA. Here she examines the presentation of the Latin apparatus in Bodleian MS Ashmole 35, with glances for comparison at Manchester, Chetham's Library MS A.7.38, both of Macaulay's "recension one." Chetham retains the Latin verses, but replaces the Latin glosses with an abbreviated mix of Latin and English. Ashmole omits the Latin altogether. The verses, the portion of the apparatus that is most resistent to loss in other copies, are simply omitted; and the glosses, while still in red to mark them off from the rest of the text, are entirely in English, and while often based on the Latin that they replace, they also draw from the English text of the poem, as can be seen in the numerous instances in which the gloss and the poem differ. Echard makes some fascinating deductions from the Ashmole glossator's many additions and revisions. Overall, she concludes, where the original Latin apparatus was intended to present an alternative voice in confrontation with the English text, the glossator has eliminated the confrontation, and he has opted for the English. [PN. Copyright The John Gower Society. JGN 18.1] Author/Editor Author/Editor Echard, Siân Published Echard, Siân. "Glossing Gower: In Latin, in English, and in absentia: The Case of Bodleian Ashmole 35." In Re-visioning Gower. Ed. Yeager, R.F.. Charlotte, NC: Pegasus Press, 1998, pp. 237-256. Gower Subject Confessio Amantis Manuscripts and Textual Studies Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Glossing Gower: In Latin, in English, and in absentia: The Case of Bodleian Ashmole 35. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Pegasus Press, Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1998 Type The nature or genre of the resource Book Section PeerReviewed Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review In his dissertation, Fanale studies the functions of confessors and confessor figures in late medieval English literature: Gower's "Confessio Amantis," "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight," and Chaucer's "Parson's Tale," "Book of the Duchess," and Prologue to the "Legend of Good Women," with attention to aesthetic backgrounds in the "Roman de la Rose" and late-medieval art, and theological backgrounds in penitential legislation, handbooks, sermons, and liturgies. His treatment of Gower (pp. 211-27) attends to background to the figures of Genius and Venus, structural similarities between the CA and "the post-Lateran IV style of confessing" (216), Venus and Genius as "co-confessors for Amans" (220), and Amans' "imperfect contrition" (226). [MA] Author/Editor Author/Editor Fanale, James Francis. Published Fanale, James Francis. God's Ear: The Confessor in the Theology, Art, and Literature of the Late Middle Ages. Ph.D. Dissertation. University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign, 1987. iii, 300 pp. Dissertation Abstracts International A48.02 (1987): 387. Fully accessible via ProQuest Dissertations & Theses Global. Gower Subject Confessio Amantis Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource God's Ear: The Confessor in the Theology, Art, and Literature of the Late Middle Ages. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1987 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review Discusses the difference between earthly and spiritual goods in Book 4 of CA, focusing on an episode near the end of Book 4, when Amans, despairing over his lack of rewards in love, points out that a sinner who had prayed to God with half as much bisinesse as he had prayed to his lady "scholde nevere come in Helle" (CA 4.3495). Amans unwittingly alludes to the proper goal of prayer; he also raises a question about the nature of God that was a subject of considerable late medieval theological speculation. The tale of "Iphis and Araxarathen" which follows is enigmatic at best as a counsel on avoiding despair. Allen suggests however that by making Iphis a "kinges Sone" (4.3579), Gower uses Iphis' suicide to recall Christ's sacrifice, echoing a common medieval moralization of Ovid's tale. But where Christ offers hope, Iphis dies in despair. The reminder of Christ's promise of redemption creates a contrast between Christ and Araxarathen, who is unmoved by prayer, that echoes Amans' comment on the difference between God and his lady and that offers a true remedy for despair. "God's favor is predictably attainable while an adored and idealized human's may or may nor be," Allen concludes (p. 214). Amans treats his lady as if she were God, and clearly needs a reorientation. The contrast to the earlier tale of Iphis, in which a lover's prayer does earn a reward, only reinforces the arbitrariness and unreliability of earthly love. The reliability of God, by contrast, as the object of bisinesse and prayer prepares the ending of the poem, when "an old, worn Amans will turn to God for the certainty that he could never find in his lady" (p. 220). [PN. Copyright The John Gower Society. JGN 9.2] Author/Editor Author/Editor Allen, David G. Published Allen, David G.. "God's Faithfulness and the Lover's Despair: The Theological Framework of the Iphis and Araxarathen Story." In John Gower: Recent Readings. Papers Presented at the Meetings of the John Gower Society at the International Congress on Medieval Studies, Western Michigan University, 1983-88. Ed. Yeager, R.F.. Studies in Medieval Culture (26). Kalamazoo, MI: Western Michigan University, 1989, pp. 209-23. Gower Subject Confessio Amantis Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource God's Faithfulness and the Lover's Despair: The Theological Framework of the Iphis and Araxarathen Story Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Western Michigan University, Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1989 Type The nature or genre of the resource Book Section PeerReviewed Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review Zweers "aims to provide a more complete insight into Gower's narrative construction of the 'Confessio' and the manuscript version of the 'Pantheon' that Gower most likely used as his guide." Beyond the "obvious debt" in Gower's reference to this text, Zweers points out the "strong thematic and stylistic similarities to Godfrey's work throughout Book VIII." Attempting to overcome any resistance to claims of Gower's use of "Pantheon," Zweers traces the critical reception of this textual connection as well as the reception history of "Pantheon." Gower acknowledges Godfrey's "auctoritas" at the beginning of the "Tale of Apollonius of Tyre," claims Zweers, before explaining how this tale about incest actually was crucial to ending CA through comparison and source study. Moving from this comparison, Zweers shows further thematic relationships between "Pantheon" and Book VIII of CA. She argues that it is a more fitting source for CA than the more commonly recognized source, "Historia Apollonii Regis Tyri." Zweers then systematically dissects Gower's text to show its indebtedness to Godfrey's "Pantheon." [JGS. Copyright. The John Gower Society. eJGN 39.2] Author/Editor Author/Editor Zweers, Thari L. Published Zweers, Thari L. "Godfrey of Viterbo's Pantheon and John Gower's Confessio Amantis: The Story of Apollonius Retold." Accessus 5.1 (2019): n.p. Gower Subject Confessio Amantis Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Godfrey of Viterbo's "Pantheon" and John Gower's "Confessio Amantis": The Story of Apollonius Retold Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2019 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Author/Editor Author/Editor Vallese, Tarquinio. Published Vallese, Tarquinio. Goffredo Chaucer: Visto da un Italiano. Milan, Genoa, Rome, Naples: Società Anonima Editrice Dante Alighieri, 1930, pp. 2, 74, 102, 117. Gower Subject Backgrounds and General Criticism Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations Review Terms Gower's style "chiselled," in comparison with Chaucer's, and alludes to their interdependence as poets. [RFY1981] Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Goffredo Chaucer: Visto da un Italiano. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1930 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review Poverty, Bullón-Fernández points out, is not a major theme in "Confessio Amantis." Gower does, however, explore "the relation between subjects and objects" (187)--that is, between the self and possessions--in Book V of the poem, devoted to avarice. This exploration depends on the meaning of two words, "properte" and "astat." The tale of Midas depicts the discordant effects of avarice by presenting the boundary between the animate self and inanimate things as "excessively porous" (188). Midas's power to turn anything he likes into gold transforms his "astat" in two senses: the things around him and himself. For Bullón-Fernández, the story and its moral qualify Genius's discussion of "gentilesse" in Book IV. This discourse notes that the self and possessions are alike in being transient, whereas virtue endures as an outgrowth of the soul. Nevertheless, Genius's use of the terms "good" and "goods" remains ambivalent. On the one hand, he uses the terms to refer to moral realities; on the other hand, to material ones as well. [MPK. Copyright. John Gower Society. eJGN 42.2] Author/Editor Author/Editor Bullón-Fernández, María. Published Bullón-Fernández, María. Goods and the Good in "Confessio Amantis." In John Gower in England and Iberia: Manuscripts, Influences, Reception. Ed. Ana Sáez-Hidalgo and R. F. Yeager. Publications of the John Gower Society X. Cambridge, UK: D. S. Brewer, 2014. Pp. 183-92. Gower Subject Confessio Amantis Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Goods and the Good in "Confessio Amantis." Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2014 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gower Collection GowerType Customized Item type for items in the Gower Database Review Mentions Gower's use of London, particularly the Westminster area; argues that Gower's works are encyclopedic. [RFY1981; rev. MA] Author/Editor Author/Editor Brewer, Derek. Published Brewer, Derek. Gothic Chaucer. In Derek Brewer, ed. Geoffrey Chaucer. Writers and Their Background (Athens: Ohio University Press, 1975), pp. 12, 27-28, 30. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Gothic Chaucer. Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1975